The Tempest, Oldham Coliseum. Runs until September 28. THE touring Contact Theatre company have taken some artistic liberties with Shakespeare's parabolic piece about the uses and abuses of power.

But their additions and minor alterations are little more than salad dressing, designed to provide essential elements of humour and some exciting visual effects.

In this, the production is helped by Nick Beadle's highly able lighting and some excellent costume and set design.

As a result we are never bogged down by the story's weighty responsibities and, thankfully, the company, well directed by Benjamin Twist, never allows the pace to slow.

The plot is all about Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, and his struggle to become a successful ruler and whether or not he is able to find enough humility to forgive his political adversaries.

One senses there is a deliberate intent here to ally some of its message to the current pre-election campaign posturing and today's political morality, or lack of it.

In the role of Prospero's savage, deformed and ultimately wayward slave, Caliban, Dominic McHale is superb. McHale also combines with cohorts Trinculo, the jester, played by Jan Linnik and Stephano, the drunken butler (Michael Brent) to provide us with some of the finest comic moments.

Rina Mahoney, as Miranda, daughter of Prospero, also turns in a fine performance in a romantic role alongside the more than competent Michael Begley, the son to the King of Naples.

Gary Raymond, who looks remarkably like Sean Connery, plays his pivotal role of Prospero with appropriate authority.

Highlight of the play is the unscripted slapstick wedding scene in which the characters perform an outrageous comedy sequence to music in the style of a silent Hollywood movie. Well worth a trip down the M62. NICK JACKSON

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