The Big Review: A Winter's Tale
Here is the second installment of reviews by the SpaceWorks Arts Awards contender, Steven Shawcroft. Here are his thoughts on the award-nominated production of A Winter’s Tale…
I am not extremely familiar with all Shakespeare’s plays. Some I know by name alone. This is one of them. Without any prior knowledge of the play I was still able to grasp the concept, jealously and wrath over misunderstandings are quite popular in Shakespeare.
In The Winter’s Tale unfortunately, like many of the other plays, has a tendency to be slow in parts. When it picks up, it’s gripping and you forgive its pace in other parts. Once at the trial of Hermione, where she is brought out chained and distraught, you cannot help but watch as Leontes’ unproved conviction of her unfaithfulness destroys her and everyone he holds dear. Hermione, who in the opening scenes was playfully taking command of all those in attendance, is reduced to bruised pleading for forgiveness. Also strong is the scene of Antigonus seeing the spirit of Hermione, with her actually appearing through the doors in front of him before exiting backwards through them, and then being attacked by a bear (Represented with blood-red lighting and sound effects). As is the case throughout the play, this harrowing scene is then followed by the hilarious Shepherds, engaging the audience with their idiotic behaviour.
The second half of the play suffers from being a naturally weaker section. Mostly because for some time very little which is actually relevant appears to happen. A large portion of it is taken up early on by a comedic, musical, sheep-shearing festival, helpful in lightening the tone from its previous heart-wrenching scenes, and to show \hermione’s daughter grown up as raised by the shepherds. This and the excellently-staged end scene, with its clever use of material and pulley system to cloak and uncloak the “statue” Hermione, hlep maintain the pace and power of this production. In between these events is a lot of monologues and duologues, some wof which appear to reference events in the play, some of which don’t appear to, some of which do refer to events in the play but don’t feel that important. Mix that with Leontes lamenting over the death of Hermione, and their son, then being introdeuced to his daughter, whom he doesn’t at first recognise, and you get the second act of the play. Perhaps prior knowledge of this play helps these scenes along.
More than helping this production along is its extremely watchable cast, whom director Amber Elliott appears to have taken point to ensure everyone on stage at a time is doing something. Generally all performers are visible active in each of their scenes and , whilst this can be a bit of a distraction (particularly in traverse, with two sets of action happening on opposite end of the performance space), it’s a very useful one if you do ever tire of the monologues and wish to watch another character playing with flutes or eating grapes. This strong cast includes Tabitha Beck-Khan who is mesmerising as Hermione, equally so as the hysterical, dim-witted servant in the second act, Jennifer Shakesby commanding the stage as Camilla (research tells me updated from the male Camillo, presumable to make the relationship with Polixenes more intimate), Jonathan Dolling as Antigonus trying his hardest to reason with Leontes over his misjudgement and Victoria Denard as the playful Mamillus and other roles.
Whilst I still have some issues with the play itself, as a production it’s near flawless. Superb cast and direction make this show worth a watch.
