The Winter's Tale

Synopsis

'Pray you, sit by us, and tell's a tale. Merry or sad shall't be? As merry as you will. A sad tale's best for winter.' A tale of passion, jealousy, fantasy and fairytale, the play charts the transition from winter to spring, tragedy to comedy, and revenge to romance. It is the story of high adventure where an angry King falsely accuses and discards his family to his later regret

Our Review:

7 January 2008

In an odd, not to say perverse, mood of experimentalism, director Phil Willmott has destroyed the chronology of Shakespeare’s most beautiful play, The Winter's Tale, starting with the rustic marriage in Bohemia before reverting to the jealousy of Leontes in Sicily that led to Hermione’s arraignment and the abandonment of baby Perdita on a foreign shore.

In other words, the tragedy and romance of the Leontes plot is used as an explanation for the wedding, thus upsetting the whole tonality of the play, which is one of resolution and discovery after the emotional upheavals, accusations and bizarre events of the first three acts. We don’t even see poor old Antigonus, the baby’s saviour, exit “pursued by bear”, and that wonderful nightmarish, ambivalent bridge passage between the two worlds of the play loses its power and poetry.

The story of Leontes is in fact “recounted” by Autolycus, that snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, here played by [Phil Seal...

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