The play is performed as a tea party, hosted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for the benefit of special guest Charles Darwin.
Puppets arise out of a Victorian tea table to tell the tale.
The Tempest tells the tale of a shipwrecked crew landing on an island inhabited by Prospero, a sorceror, Miranda, Prospero's daughter. Various fairies and magical creatures enslaved by Prospero also inhabit the island. However, the play can also be used to demonstrate the conflict between science and religion that typified the Victorian age in England. Darwin, who proposed the theory of evolution, and the Pre-Raphaelites, who sought to revive the style and spirit of Italian painting before Raphael, also illustrate this conflict of the Victorian age. Bass brings the two together in this production to illuminate their conflict.