“If I’ve learned anything over the years, it is that Prospero is a role that brings out the peculiar qualities of its interpreter,” the critic Michael Billington recently wrote in The Guardian. “Oscar Wilde said that there are as many Hamlets as there are actors and exactly the same rule applies to Prospero.” Sigourney Weaver is stepping into the role in Jamie Lloyd’s new adaptation of Shakespeare’s revenge play. While she is not the first female to play Prospero—that credit goes to Valerie Braddell, who performed in a 1981 production—this is a first for Weaver, who is making her West End debut. “It’s not your granny’s Tempest,” she has said of the production. The cast also features Mara Huf as Miranda, Jude Akuwudike as Alonso, and Mason Alexander Park as Ariel. Following The Tempest, Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will star as the quarreling lovers Benedick and Beatrice in the Jamie Lloyd Company’s Much Ado About Nothing, set to begin in February. —Jeanne Malle