If years of being force-fed Elizabethan English in the classroom has relegated your appreciation of Shakespeare to a reoccurring nightmare in which men in tights attack your grades with swords made out of discarded SparkNotes, allow John Manzelli to change your mind. Trained in classical deconstruction of theatre, which he describes as "basically meaning that I take old plays and make them interesting," the director will be presenting a version of The Tempest at New Theatre that does away with all of the stuffy outfits and melancholy settings.

Instead, we are to imagine that if Shakespeare were alive today he'd be sipping a Mai Tai on a breezy Hawaiian afternoon pondering the intricacies of colonialism, love, and revenge while furiously penning the next blockbuster hit.

• Stage