The first half of Antoni Cimolino’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the Tom Patterson Theatre is basically perfect. I say this not to complain about weaknesses in the second half, just to explicitly appreciate what occurs before intermission. The texture and nuance the ensemble brings to Shakespeare’s language under Cimolino’s direction pulls off a magic trick: through the love and detail of the cast’s characterizations and psycho-elocution, this production manages to make The Winter’s Tale sing as both a cosmic Greco-Roman myth and also a taut and a searing chamber drama.
The story deals with the chaos wrought when the (initially) good King Leontes (Graham Abbey) is driven mad with senseless jealousy by the idea his wife, Queen Hermione (Sara Topham) is having an affair with his best friend, Polixines (André Sills), the King of Bohemia. She isn’t, but Leontes is so certain of his suspicion that he causes both Polixines and Camillo (Tom Rooney), friend and advisor, to flee the country. Also, Leontes declares his recently-born daughter to be illegitimate (she isn’t), and casts her forth to be eaten by crows. The show-trial of his wife’s guilt ends up being so stressful it causes the death of the son of Leontes and Hermione, the promising young Mamillius (George Robinet, at the performance I saw). Immediately thereafter, we witness the grief-induced demise of Hermione. Leontes ends the first half of the play with no wife, no son, no daughter, and a nation wracked in the midst of his self-inflicted familial carnage. He will spend the next sixteen years doing penance under the watchful eye of Paulina (Yanna McIntosh), until events conspire for some divine intervention.
All this trauma leads to one of the most razor-sharp intellectual thrillers in classical literature (at least before the bathroom break). Time has come for Shakespeareans to recognize The Winter’s Tale is no longer “underrated” or a “hidden gem” but a play that has justly made its way onto the hot B-list of Shakespearean production (I’m seeing three renditions this August alone). Like with Richard II, many Shakespeare lovers and scholars are wholly alike in thinking their passion for The Winter’s Tale makes them unique. Luckily, the fandom is deserved, and Cimolino’s version makes as eloquent a case as you could hope for in regards to its popularity. (Shakespearean taste always varies by era; in the 19th century Henry VIII was a blockbuster, which today feels perplexing.)
Abbey and Topham in particular essentially have honorary DFAs in verse speaking, as they are able to mold and articulate the language to doctoral proportions. Abbey walks us through every step in Leontes’ upsetting journey and we become complicit in our understanding of his irrationality. The scene where Leontes attempts to convince Camillo to poison Polixines is so finely-spun as to be terrifying. All the lords attending on Leontes in the Sicilian court deserve acclaim: David Collins, Paul Dunn, Tarique Lewis, and Dakota Jamal Wellman, all intelligently populate the group of men attempting to dissuade Leontes from his insanity, and having a strong chorus of reasoned voices benefits the play immeasurably. The quality of the listening in the audience was so high that people could be heard gasping when Leontes instructed Antigonus to throw his newborn in the fire, and laughing when Polixines talks about his son passing time at the cottage of a “most homely shepherd,” so easily did they grasp the aural storytelling.
At the start of the second half, the character of Time (Seana McKenna) uses her pleasingly angelic wings to push the story sixteen years into its future, and causes us to spend time with a newer Bohemian generation (one can imagine this Time announcing “The great work begins”). I would never claim the second half of this play is rendered unsuccessfully. I only suspect most directors fundamentally have a Sicilian bias. In the way that many fans of the movie Full Metal Jacket love the basic training section with the drill sergeant played by R. Lee Ermey and then concoct reasons as to why the later Vietnam sequences are in the film, most directors of The Winter’s Tale fall in love with Sicilia and learn to tolerate Bohemia. Sicilia invariably feels like the star with Bohemia as supporting act. This is not inherently wrong, only some day I would like to meet a theatrical artist whose love for the play had its inception with Bohemia and then grew outwards. Though all this really means is that we might be doomed to excellent Sicilias (at least occasionally), and Bohemias that feel marginally less inspired (and clearly this review is under that same spell).
But there are still highlights in these sunnier climes. Marissa Orjalo does a terrific job as the lost-princess Perdita, especially in her long discourse about the metaphorical significance of flowers. This scene is a tough one to find charming, but Orjalo inhabits the pastoral regality of Perdita in such a way that you see her, even in Bohemia and at such a remove, being Hermione’s daughter. Such lineage is also apparent in her banter with Sills’ Polixines, who clearly gets a whiff of the Queen he once knew in this seemingly low-born country lass.
The only real strike against the Bohemian scenes is the satyr dance during the sheep-shearing: just because it’s textually supported doesn’t mean a director should jump at the chance to include a phallic jig: we already get we’re in the “rural” part of the play. Even the plot with the vagabond Autolycus (Geraint Wyn Davies) makes a fun and credible case for itself, though you wish that strain of characters (Autolycus, plus the Shepherd and the Clown) all could have been included in the final scene of revelation. Making room for the adopted family would have been nice.
Which brings us to the scene that all productions of The Winter’s Tale get judged by: did you make us cry at the awakening of Hermione’s statue? I’d say this one was laudable. The effect of the statue coming to life is helped by some hand-held lanterns (lighting design by Michael Walton) being the only light sources for a while, and thus it’s easier to imagine seeing the “marble” at which the characters believe they’re looking. If ever there were two actors who could marry the bitter with the redemptive, it’s Topham and Abbey.
Though even after this celestial reunion, Cimolino’s production ends with Time accompanying Mamilius back onto the stage, to remind Leontes that, whatever the powers of divine grace and redemption, there are some wrongs that can never be righted. Cimolino also began the play with Time prompting Mamilius to “tell us a tale,” and along the way, showed us a folkloric saga that also has a surprising kinship with both Jung and Pinter.
All in all, the production is as gripping a version of the late-period romance as you could ever hope to see. Victory in Shakespearean staging often looks like leaning forward in your seat and watching much of the action through a haze of “tears that sacred pity hath engendered” (as the author says in another play). This show very much accomplishes that, and leaves you thrilled and moved. Ultimately, quibbling over Sicilian versus Bohemian inspiration is likely critical covetousness.
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