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:

15 August 2002

Less than a quarter of the way through The Winter's Tale comes the heartfelt cry from the stage of, "you speak in a language I understand not." It is hard not to yee-hah in sympathy.

The RSC has been charged with sloppy, inconsistent verse-speaking. Why then tax the largely English cast with the additional burden of speaking knotty verse in an American accent, when it's unclear why the Bard has been transferred to the 20th-century Deep South anyway? Whole passages of speech are rendered incomprehensible, even in the front stalls. No parallels about the two societies are drawn - the exchange of the Avon for Appalachia; doublet for dungarees - seems merely wilful and the production simply jars.

Transferred from London’s Roundhouse where it drew poor audiences and mixed reviews, The Winter's Tale is a sprawling, uneven affair: a tale of two halves.

Leontes, King of Sicily (Michael Cumpsty) is thrown into a violent jealousy when his wife Q...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 31 August 2002:

Probably the best WT I've ever seen, although be warned - unless you know the play very well you may have difficulty deciphering the American accents. The owner of the Stratford guest house where I stayed told me that every American guest who saw the show absolutely hated it, and on the night he saw it himself a large party of disgruntled Americans walked out at the interval because it wasn't "traditional Shakespeare"! Come on - we need MORE untraditional Shakespeare of this calibre. It's a perfect example of how an unfamiliar setting makes you look at the play in a new light....

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