We seem to be living in a Sicilian golden age. Having had the unique experience of seeing two terrific productions of The Winter’s Tale in one calendar week – one in Stratford, ON, one in Spring Green, WI – it’s hard not to think the first three acts of the play are the best domestic drama this side of Eugene O’Neill. While not meaning to compare between the two, each version in its own way finds a special excellence through the acts set in Sicily, while Bohemia remains doomed to be a tougher assignment.
In APT’s production, directed by Shana Cooper, Nate Burger as Leontes takes the reins and creates a brilliantly sensitive and sweaty monarch whose own intellectual genius ends up being the downfall of himself, his family, and his nation. Cooper’s production is gently modern in a way reminiscent of Brideshead Revisited and that certain school of British academia-chic. While suits-and-ties sit oddly with Shakespeare’s play in which everyone is praying to Apollo, having the character of Time (Sarah Day) begin the play by using her “wings” (here, the imagined hands of a clock) helps telegraph that we are watching a “tale” more than a realistic docu-fiction. Amidst a great ensemble, Burger makes every tangled, knotty thought of Leontes clear, digestible, and appropriately upsetting, which by its very nature justifies the production’s existence. Particularly his painful attempt to right his wrongs after the carnage of the trial of Hermione (Laura Rook, characteristically great) lands as devastatingly pathetic.
Rook is as imposing as you'd expect from her body of work, and makes a brilliant choice when in the trial scene you can tell from her reactions that she didn’t know prior to that very public moment that her newborn daughter was “cast out” to the mercy of the elements. She smartly justifies Hermione’s frustration with the demanding Mamilius (Elijah Quigley, at the performance I saw) to be the result not of matronly coldness but of morning-sickness; Hermione after all is pregnant with the nascent Perdita. Earlier, her “what, have I twice said well?” nails the queen’s loving irony. And later, her improvisatory actions in her own legal defense showcase the extra-cruelty of Leontes in regards to her imagined affair with Polixenes (La Shawn Banks).
Banks is the best Polixenes in living memory. Very goofy (then scary) in Bohemia, the level of world-weariness he brings to this notably purple-passage is stunning:
We were, fair queen,
Two lads that thought there was no more beyond
But such a day tomorrow as today,
And to be boy eternal.
Cooper’s changing of ‘behind’ to ‘beyond’ is notable enough, but Banks never wallows in the dialogue’s idyllic beauty, but proves he knows such a world is not recapturable. Rarely do you see a Polixenes who starts off with this much tread on the tires. While I wish the opening “movement piece” between Leontes and Polixenes had been more literal and less jarringly expressionistic (choreography by Erika Chong Shuch), the nostalgia the two kings both feel for Leontes “green velvet coat” is a fun insert.
A review of this production seems to demand a catalogue of praises for the company’s members. Gavin Lawrence is incredibly easy to buy as a wise dignitary and compatriot: his Camillo likely has a military background. Sun Mee Chomet brings great post-natal feeling to the servant Emilia, and Rassell Holt nails the earnest gravity of Antigonus: his bear-mauling death-screams are disturbing in the best way. (Speaking of which, while I don’t know how the lights and fog would work on a sunny Sunday afternoon, that bear was scarier than it had any right to be.) Dee Dee Batteast as Paulina makes no bones about referring repeatedly to Leontes as a “tyrant,” and brings necessary wry sarcasm to the self-deprecating references to her supposed “rashness of a woman.” David Daniel’s Old Shepherd delightfully uses “a pretty one” to answer his own question about the infant being “a boy or a child?” and even Cleomenes and Dion are fun in their own bumpkiny way (as played by David Alan Anderson and Nathan Barlow).
Tale as told as time: the scenes in Bohemia are just not as riveting as the ones in Sicilia. Whatever its bucolic, visual charms, Bohemia just has a habit of outstaying its welcome. Marcus Truschinksi is enjoyably rakish as the rogue Autolycus, and the first song of the sheep-shearing festival is delightful in its romp and added references to mosquitoes. But I dare anyone to care about Camillo getting Florizel and Perdita on a boat to Sicilia as much as they do about Hermione’s trial. The first part of The Winter’s Tale excels because it has no exposition: Shakespeare drops you into the twisted psyche of Leontes and expects you to swim or perish. Thus, the end of Act 4 demands that we deal with our young lovers (Xavier Edward King and Molly Martinez-Collins) getting back to Leontes’ court so the play’s big reunion can be effectively achieved. Shakespeare’s narrative strategy ends up being curiously bottom-heavy. Despite having also played Florizel at the Goodman Theatre in 2019, King adds too many subliminal modern tags to his language to ever be fully endearing, though the montage sequence where we see the new love of the younger generation preparing for their voyage, contrasted with the stationary pain of Burger’s older generation, is quite moving.
If a catalogue of actors is tolerable, hopefully a compendium of smaller moments is acceptable:
The eeriness of a shadowy Hermione appearing to Antigonus. Hermione practicing palmistry on Polixenes in the midst of their “pinching fingers.” Mamilius worrying about his dad as he claims “I am like you they say.” Leontes genuinely doubting himself with “thou dost make possible things not so held.” Burger and Rook’s upsettingly long kiss before Hermione’s exit with Polixenes. The earth-consuming devastation of “it is a bawdy PLANET” and “Your eyeglass / Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn.” André Pluess’ heartstring-tugging sound design. The audience laughing when Polixenes and Camillo bring up the newfound richness of the Old Shepherd (sometimes just understanding Shakespeare’s plotting is enough to make you chuckle).
All riches aside, I wouldn’t say Cooper lands the plane. The presentation of Hermione’s statue is too clunky, and the assembled not impressed enough by her revivifying, for the ending to be ideally affecting. Mamilius’ reappearance after an extended moment where Hermione decides to exit hand-in-hand with Leontes is a reasonable button to the action, but ends up not saying all that much.
I also don’t know why Leontes’ “spider” speech was cut, or how Paulina knows about the Camillo/Polixenes poisoning plot when she wasn’t present for its revelation. But let’s put quibbling aside. Cooper’s production may not play as much of the piano as Antoni Cimolino’s Stratford production did, but at its best nails a more limited range, and is absolute catnip for the Shakespeare kid’s soul. This version justifies itself in such moments as when we see Nate Burger reacting through pain to the sounds of his baby daughter crying but still demanding that his lackeys “carry this female bastard hence.” Also through such memorable staging inventions as when we see Leontes begin to choke Hermione during the trial scene, a choice we think might tip the play’s sympathy balance much too far, but then find that Hermione ends up encouraging him to continue the violence after he relents, as she proves her “fear to die” has been untimely killed.
Clearly we’re in the midst of a Winter’s Tale bumper crop, and let’s decide it’s exciting that a definitive Bohemia has yet to be harvested.
No comments:
Post a Comment