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It’s the final week of Quantum Theatre’s production of “The Tempest” at the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark. That also makes it Act V, Scene V in the career of Quantum’s visionary founder and artistic director Karla Boos, who’s retiring this year.

That swan song, plus the spectacular site-specific staging of Shakespeare’s final play against an iconic backdrop of post-industrial Pittsburgh, are pretty good reasons to catch this show. So is Jeffrey Carpenter’s commanding lead performance as Prospero, the deposed and exiled statesman who uses magic to wreak bitter vengeance on those who have wronged him. (If you haven’t seen it, apologies: All five remaining performances are sold out.)

For me, the production also calls to mind the arguments over Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film “The Odyssey,” and all the ways he deviated from the source material.

The plays of Shakespeare have for decades been subject to imaginative, even delirious stagings, from Orson Welles costuming “Julius Caesar” to summon 1930s fascism to the film “Scotland, Pa.” resetting “Macbeth” in a small-town fast-food restaurant. Roles have been gender-swapped so often that no one bats an eye when the sympathetic state official Gonzalo is recast as a woman, as in Quantum’s “Tempest.”

And consider Caliban, the “monster” Prospero has enslaved on the island where the play is set.

Though ultimately sympathetic, Caliban was once traditionally portrayed as a misshapen being, and even as various animals. Prospero says he is “not honored with / A human shape.”

But starting in the 20th century, scholars note he’s often depicted as a symbol of colonized indigenous societies, one whose rightful dominion was usurped by an imperialist wizard. (In 1611, when “The Tempest” debuted, the British had only begun to explore the “brave new world” of the Americas and battle its native inhabitants, and they were just a few years from bringing the first enslaved Africans here.)

In Shakespeare, the main clue to Caliban’s appearance is the derogatory way other characters describe him. But in most productions nowadays, Caliban is portrayed not as malformed at all, but fully human. Director Boos, in fact, told WESA that she means the character, as portrayed by Jerreme Rodriguez, to be beautiful — turning the descriptions of him into egregious and self-serving misrepresentations.

Perhaps changing times — whether in the 400 years since Shakespeare last wrote, or in the 2,500 or so since Homer set down “The Odyssey” — can justify or even demand new renderings of classic characters?

Still, my favorite moment in Quantum’s “Tempest,” which I caught last week beneath skies threatening rain, was the climactic exchange between Prospero and Ariel, the spirit who is also his slave.

Ariel, as played by Pittsburgh legend Tomé Cousin, is reporting to Prospero on how potent his revenge has proven.

“Your charm so strongly works ’em / That if you now beheld them, your affections / Would become tender,” says Ariel.

“Dost thou think so, spirit?” says Prospero.

“Mine would, sir, were I human.”

There follows a long pause.

“And mine shall,” responds Prospero at last. “Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling / Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, / One of their kind, that relish all as sharply / Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?”

In that pause — a powerful man self-consciously reckoning with the humanity he has long suppressed — perhaps dwells the entire play.