STAGE REVIEW: The Tempest - at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, January 21, 2017.

REPUTATIONS are made, enhanced and then maintained on promises being fulfilled, especially when those promises are offering magical experiences.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is not averse to boasts of this kind and when it comes to their now outstanding and hugely popular Christmas productions they seem to manage to find the degree of magic and keep the promise that makes for outstanding theatrical memories.

In recent years they have excelled with splendid offerings such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Wendy and Peter Pan and Robin Hood.

The Tempest itself is a story of magic and this latest RSC production - which Shakespeare centred on an island of mystery and shipwrecks, manages with the aid of some of the latest hi-tech wizardry available to take theatrical entertainment and production achievement to a new level.

Once again it has director Gregory Doran at the helm and his take on this tale of Prospero, the Duke of Milan, and his daughter, stranded on this island ruled by a witch after the Duke was usurped by his brother and put out to sea, is the perfect potion to set the ball rolling towards Christmas celebrations.

He’s called in top notch whiz-kids who are right at the sharp end of computer gadgetry - using Intel and London-based pioneers of ‘cyber-thespianism’ - Imaginarium Studios, as the production’s official technical partners.

It’s unique and visionary and could well change the experience of live theatre. It could easily have been gimmickry overkill too at birth but director Doran keeps it in check to essentiality only.

It means the audience is left not over-awed but enthralled by the end product which provides a complex spectacle involving 27 projectors and a considerably rich abundance of special effects used in the main by the impressive and lithe Mark Quartley as Ariel and the island’s spirits.

Hopefully the RSC and other theatres will not journey too often along this route, but use it sparingly to support the spoken word - not to have it languishing as a follow on.

Ariel’s hi-tech appearance provides a reminder of the characters in the film Avatar. Lithe, lively and mysterious, he sports a Mohican-cum-cockatoo hairstyle and wears a tight-fitting motion capture suit. This helps blend and control the movements of his avatar, and he and others provide ethereal-cum-shimmering images around a stage which has all the action played out in the rotting ribs of a once mighty wooden sailing ship.

It's a most effective menacing touch from set designer Stephen Brimson Lewis.

While all the talk could continue about hi-tech it’s still the traditional acting talent on stage that matters and here there is richness in abundance too, especially with the return to the RSC after 22 years of Simon Russell Beale.

His Prospero provides a masterclass, so let’s hope it’s less than a couple of decades before he treads the Stratford boards again.

Timing, delivery and presence all impeccable, no wonder generous applause deservedly cascaded down from the circles and out of the stalls, led by many leading leading lights of stage and screen such as the nearby David Tennant and David Suchet, and other such luminaries sprinkled throughout the audience.

It’s a perfectly balanced Prospero - juggling happiness, guilt, revenge and remorse As expected with the Bard’s work there’s a good measure of pathos and comedy and this helps pave the way for plenty of other fine performances that are more than a match for the latest gadgetry.

Wonderful comic moments fall mainly to of the trio of Tony Jayawardena’s boozed-up butler Stephano, Simon Trinder’s exceptionally eccentric Trinculo, and Joe Dixon’s outstanding dusty grey marine-like Caliban, complete with wriggling fish!

There may have been heaps of excitement about special effects, but the most special of all are the effective talents of a cast pulling in the right direction to provide the very best of the traditional values of stage performance.

Live theatre and technology can go together as an artform, and either way this is one of those Christmas productions that can proudly proclaim it’s one not to be missed.