St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival: “The Winter’s Tale”, a fairy tale for adults with an excellent cast and sure-handed direction!!!
The principle joy of the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Winter’s Tale is the uniformly excellent cast. From Jesse Nerenberg’s Leontes, incited into a jealous rage by Catherine Rainville’s elegant Hermione, to Quincy Armorer’s intense and proud Polixenes, to the vibrant through every fiber of her being Tamara Brown’s Paulina, this ensemble, under the sure handed direction of Mikaela Davies, is firmly in command of Shakespeare’s play of love gone awry.
The play hinges on Leontes’ swift seduction by the green-eyed monster. As his wife and queen Hermione deploys her innocent charms on Armorer’s Polixenes, Nerenberg as her husband Leontes must rationalize a dizzy fall from trust, spinning truth into lies in the span of a few verses. As a man cursed with the talent to turn nothing into something, believing as he does that “all’s true that is mistrusted”, when Leontes finally shakes off this bout of temporary insanity, he does not easily arouse our sympathies. And yet, as the truth dawns on Nerenberg’s remorseful husband, a man who has destroyed all who loved him, we are as ready to forgive him as Hermione – miraculously restored to gracious life for no other purpose.
What makes The Winter’s Tale a fairy tale for adults is the fact that death is forbidden to conquer love, if love opts to forgive.
The play is a storm of emotional extremes that sweep across the stage. Characters one moment joyful and literally bursting with life – Hermione begins the play pregnant – are the next forced to endure unjust slanders and brutal separations. In The Winter’s Tale, we are all adolescents drowning in the realization that love is both pleasure and pain.
But all this loving and losing, cursing and forgiving, is sprinkled throughout with delightful comedic interludes, served up by Richard Sheridan Willis’ Old Shepherd, Zach Council as the Shepherd’s Son, and Tamara Brown as Time and Autolycus. Quick witted, and sometimes equally quick footed, Willis and Council are serious fun, while Brown steals the title Mistress of Mischief.
One goes to a Shakespeare festival for the performances; to appreciate the actors command of the poetic language, to enjoy the cleverness of their shape shifting characters, and how they tell the story with energy and passion; all qualities on display from this wonderful ensemble.
If there is a puzzle in this Winter’s Tale it is the set. While Vanessa Imeson’s costumes are colourful to a delightful extreme, and well suited to reflect the inner life of each character, (check out Polixenes’ wicked pink suit and lime green shoes) Graham Price’s set offers little to link us to the spirit of play. Where in the name of fair Bohemia are we? The contemporary costumes aptly depict a servile court under the thumb of a paranoid ruler; Nerenberg’s Leontes is a ranting, self-obsessed tyrant wreaking havoc. But, while the set’s box like configuration is functional, it does little to enhance our sense of being in a place where foundlings morph into princesses and wronged wives, immortalized in marble, are restored to life.
This is a play about a love so powerful it reaches beyond the grave and invokes magic. How else to explain the timely tolling of the town of Prescott’s bell during the moment Willis as Antigonus is forced to abandon a baby, or the appearance of a full moon atop a cloud at the close of the play. Tis’ the stuff of enchantment.
The chief conjurers of this delightful escapade are the cast and director. From Sophia Swettenham’s winsome Perdita, who springs logically from the child Mamillius, to Kim Nelson’s beautifully understated and intelligently portrayed Camilla, to Liam Lynch’s Florizel, unabashed counterfoil to the inconstant Leontes, and also contributor of lively original music, this is an ensemble that celebrates The Winter’s Tale while rendering it thoroughly enjoyable.
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The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare
Directed by Mikaela Davies featuring performances by: Quincy Armorer, Tamara Brown, Zach Council, Liam Lynch, Kim Nelson, Jesse Nerenberg, Catherine Rainville, Richard Sheridan Willis, Sophia Swettenham. Set design by Graham Price. Costumes by Vanessa Imeson. Stage Manager: Hilary Nichol.
The Winter’s Tale runs in repertory with Cyrano from July 13 to August 17. To find out more or order tickets go to: stlawrenceshakespeare.ca or phone (613) 925-5788.