The Winter’s Tale

This Winter’s Tale is spirited, engaging, funny – but still moving.  Shakespeare can succeed – even performed in a park, in daylight, with a minimal ad hoc set, and with the cast in mufti.  Here is an adaptation, if you like, of one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ skilfully pared down (I assume by director Jennifer Sarah Dean) to a brisk ninety minutes.  But the hybrid plot, that switches between unashamed melodrama and broad comedy, is retained and clear - and interspersed with more or less contemporary song and dance numbers.  It’s pacey and it’s fun. 

And yet, just as Leontes (David Meadows) refuses to believe the Delphic Oracle that his wife Hermione (Melanie Gleeson) is ‘chaste’, news arrives that their son Mamillius has died, and Hermione faints dead away, we are suddenly moved, the audience gasps, perhaps close to tears…  Then the show shifts gear smoothly back to comedy and rolls on with the tale.  Such is the achievement by the director who has plotted these shifts so well, and the cast, who, nevertheless, get the shifts in tone just right with a variety of acting styles that gel into a satisfying whole. 

A standout is Bridget Sweeney as Camillo, supposedly loyal and noble, but played here with a cynical and amusing through-line as the calculating fixer, always intent on improving her status.  Another standout is Emma Austin – bubbling, buzzing with energy, continually mugging and eye-rolling for the audience – something that’s usually fatal, but here it fits and works a treat.  By contrast, David Meadows’ Leontes does not go near comedy but manages the transition from sexist authoritarian to guilt-wracked broken man beautifully.  He has another of those moments that suddenly grabs you by the throat in the final scene.  Erin McIntosh’s Perdita and Jackson Peele’s Frorizel are appropriately attractive and sexy – and Melanie Gleeson, in the rather thankless plot device character of Hermione is appropriately long-suffering, still and lovely.

With a plethora of characters (most cast play a couple of roles), each is helpfully labelled by name, and designer Aislinn Naughton puts them in a mix of costumes that are economically right.  Leontes has a buttoned-up militaristic look, as do his functionaries; Polixenes (Anton Berezin) is the charming squatter in tweed and Akubra; the Shepherd (Tref Gare, also trombonist in the four-piece band) and his daughter Clown (Emma Austin, also saxophonist) are credulous yokels in Yakka overalls, Paulina (a feisty Elizabeth Slattery) is in no nonsense trousers, a trio of crooning singers (Jessica Barton, Adam Canny and May Jasper) are in 1930s black and white, and so on.  

I am usually wary of attempts to ‘freshen up’ fusty old Shakespeare and make him palatable to contemporary audiences, but, as always, if it works, it works.  And this does.  Perhaps check out the plot on Wikipedia so you can relax.  Take picnic, a blanket or a low-to-the-ground chair and maybe a warm coat and enjoy the show.

Michael Brindley