It’s a vivid piece of work, full of passion, poignancy and moments of joy.

Walter plays Prospero, the Duke of Milan, who commands prodigious powers of magic while in exile with his daughter Miranda on a remote island.

Or more precisely, as Walter explains in a prologue, she plays Hanna, who has been an inmate in a women’s prison for 35 years after committing what she calls a “politically motivated” crime. Hanna’s eligibility for parole is decades away.

She and the other actors, who play inmates, too, act out “The Tempest” in a fenced-in prison gym, with the audience sitting in the surrounding bleachers.

St. Ann’s previously presented two other Donmar Warehouse Shakespeare productions with similar set-ups, “Julius Caesar” and “Henry IV.”

The all-female trilogy won acclaim from British critics and has helped spur more widespread casting of women as Shakespeare’s male characters.

Longing for liberation

Here in Brooklyn, Walter and her crew deliver powerful, finely wrought performances in “The Tempest.”

The notion that they are women in prison performing a play about shipwrecked lives and longing for liberation adds new layers of emotional resonance.

Jade Anouka, in the role of Prospero’s servant-spirit Ariel, radiates hope and delight every time Prospero promises that Ariel’s freedom from servitude is coming soon.

It’s a soul-wrenching struggle for Prospero to pronounce words of forgiveness for his treacherous brother Antonio (played with appropriately sinister intensity by Carolina Valdés), who usurped Prospero’s dukedom and forced him and Miranda into exile.

And when the play is over, other inmates shed their prison garb and get outta jail. Prospero/Hanna is left behind, with just Caliban (played with great comic verve by Sophie Stanton) for company.

Until this moment, Caliban has been a raucous, curse-hurling creature. But he has run out of things to say and stands there, speechless, buffing the concrete floor.  

Three cheers for the adept comic artistry of the actors who play Caliban’s drinking buddies Stefano (Jackie Clune) and Trinculo (Karen Dunbar).

And three cheers for Miranda (played by Leah Harvey) — whose most famous line is “O brave new world” — and her suitor Ferdinand (Sheila Atim), for their giddy, touching portrayal of young love.

‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and ‘Downton Abbey’ too

The real-life inspiration for Walter’s inmate character is Judith Clark, according to a note in the play’s program.

Clark is an inmate at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County.

She received a prison sentence of 75 years to life for acting as a getaway-car driver in a 1981 robbery in which two police officers and a Brinks guard were killed.

Clark, who has expressed profound remorse for her actions, wasn’t going to be eligible for parole until she was 107 years old.    

In late December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo commuted her sentence — making her now eligible for parole this year.   

In the course of Walter’s career, she has played roles in almost three decades of Royal Shakespeare Company productions ranging from Madeline Bray in the eight-and-a-half-hour adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel “Nicholas Nickleby” in 1980-1981 to Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” in 2006.

Her TV roles include a stint as Lady Shackleton in the hit series “Downton Abbey.”

Walter’s book, “Brutus and Other Heroines: Playing Shakespeare’s Roles for Women,” is coming out in paperback in February.

Queen Elizabeth made Walter a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire  — the female equivalent of a knight — for her contributions to drama.

The director of “The Tempest” — and the other plays in Donmar Warehouse’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy — is Phyllida Lloyd.

She’s a high-profile director of plays, operas and films including “Mamma Mia!” and “The Iron Lady,” the Margaret Thatcher biopic that won Meryl Streep an Oscar.

Queen Elizabeth made Lloyd a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

* * *

“The Tempest” runs through Feb. 19 at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
The theater is located at 45 Water St. in a converted 19th-century tobacco warehouse.
To purchase tickets, go to stannswarehouse.org or phone 718-254-8779 or 866-811-4111.

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