[NEohioPAL] Review: The Winter's Tale, Stratford

[Lawrence Seman]

Review
The Winter's Tale 
Stratford Festival
Larry Seman
 
Everyone loves a good story, whether if it's a scary one, a sweet one, or just a plain old fabrication to garner a laugh or tear. Narratives are the way we communicate with each other, how we navigate from point A to point B and we'd be lost without them. But what happens when the content turns malignant? At times an internal monologue can literally destroy any reasonable outlook and leave the storyteller bereft of everything they hold near and dear. Such is the stuff of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.
 
We have on stage two Kings, Polixenes, King of Bohemia, and Leontes, King of Sicillia, childhood friends who are at an end of a joyful visit when Leontes imagines that his wife Hermione has been sleeping with Polixenes and is the father of the child she is carrying.
A very dark door in his mind has been opened and his imagination rushes headlong through it while an aberrant jealousy devours his reason with the ferocity of a wild beast.
Certain of his own rightness Leontes obsession becomes as real to him as it is plainly irrational to everyone around him, but he is a powerful man and when this monomania asserts itself in his own mind he is speaking  a monologue ex cathedra and so much more the pity for everyone around him. 
 
Now by any standard that is mouthful and a half to open any play with and so lies the difficulty with this so-called problem play, the problem however lies in the staging: if you flinch in the least from the challenge of the text your cause is lost. Thankfully Director Marti Maraden doesn't and this Stratford production moves from strength to strength until the runaway steam engine of Leontes' twisted mind is exhausted and the wreck that he has made of his life begins the long healing process.

Assisting Ms. Maraden in her brave approach are a host of excellent actors led by Ben Carlson as the disturbed Leontes, King of Sicilia. Mr. Carlson has consistently displayed a rare gift for the non-verbal, the nuanced gesture, and when that talent is coupled with his straight forward reading of the verse the result is a marvelous art that lifts the play off the page and has the audience believing that yes this bizarre scenario is indeed possible.
 
Hermione is the much wronged wife in this tragic romance and Yanna McIntosh is more than up to the task. She is as incredulous as everyone else in the house when the accusations begin to fly and Ms. McIntosh not only survives the unjust onslaught but retains a dignified posture that bespeaks her position and love of her husband in spite of his incredible ravings. It's a perfect counter that stabs the crazy king right in the heart when he learns of her supposed death.
 
In support of the Queen, feisty Paulina dares the big bullies at court to have a go at her, and the pert Seana McKenna holds her own and more with the a series of glares that would stop a clock.
 
In the second chapter of this tale we are confronted by the passage of a literal whirley gig of time which drew more than several ooo's and ah's as the almost bare stage at the Tom Patterson theatre has several magical moments of fantastic stagecraft; even the bear was applauded as Designer John Pennoyer concocted a most scary phantom.
 
Now we have the young lovers Perdita, and Florizel who are the offspring of the prior arguing kings and Cara Ricketts and Ian Lake together make a cosy couple giving a fresh breath of spring to what has been a very cold winter of marital relations. Also the cut purse mountebank Autolycus (Tom Rooney) arrives to liven up the affairs of heart plying his dishonorable trade among such gulls as the Shepard (Brian Tree) and his addled half-baked son played by the very funny Mike Shara. 
 
There's a miracle at the end of this play but it's the kind of miracle that gives a second chance at the happiness that was, not fulfilling a wish list of what we think should be. And that's one of the oldest stories in the world: a tale for all seasons.
 
 
Larry


      
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