A witty, dark and imaginative adaptation of Shakespeare's play, Hag-Seed manages to convincingly create a vengeful Duke Prospero[citation needed] from the slightly ridiculous, and certainly more sympathetic, director Felix.

Dealing with themes of loss, revenge, a life of imprisonment and the concept of closure, Atwood uses Felix's lessons on The Tempest to the actor-inmates to demonstrate the parallels between her text and the original play.

Atwood's Hag-Seed can be considered an example of what Graham Wolfe calls theatre-fiction: "referring to novels and stories that engage in concrete and sustained ways with theatre as artistic practice and industry".

[4] Hag-Seed follows the life of Felix, once experimental artistic director of the Makeshiweg theatre festival, now an exiled man who speaks to his daughter's ghost.

Nine years into his seclusion, Felix has spent his time imagining a life shared with his dead daughter and keeping track of the two men who betrayed him; Tony and the minister of heritage Sal O'Nally.

However, as his work proves a success, she secures further funding and eventually organises a visit to a prison performance by two newly appointed government ministers, Tony and Sal.

Choosing to finally stage The Tempest he casts Anne-Marie, his original actress for the role of Miranda[citation needed] and begins readying the actors within the prison as part of his revenge scheme.