Forgive and Regret

the winter’s tale
The Stratford Festival
The national post

Nothing in world drama can move an audience in quite the same way as the last scene of The Winter's Tale. The statue of Hermione, the supposedly dead queen of Sicilia, descends from its pedestal and turns out to be the real and living woman, kept in seclusion for 16 years. She embraces her daughter Perdita, torn from her at birth and also left to die, and her husband Leontes, whose sudden irrational jealousy had set the whole seemingly tragic chain of events in motion all those years before. The sequence of resurrection and reunion touches deep chords; it can, for no clearly explicable reason, send shivers down the spine in even the crummiest production. In a good one, like that at Stratford, it also brings tears; Marti Maraden, the director, unfolds the scene at full strength, with a stageful of rapt spectators to reflect the audience's wonder, and then, with exemplary tact, extends it. The king gets the last line -- it's part of his job description -- and Leontes's here is "Hastily lead away," but he disobeys his own instruction. He and Hermione remain onstage, perhaps on the verge of an embrace, but only on the verge. For all the forgiveness, their relationship still hangs in the air as the lights fade.

Leontes's jealousy began when his wife succeeded where he had failed, in persuading his boyhood friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia, to prolong what was already a nine-month visit. Granted what is obviously a deep-rooted insecurity ( "at my request he would not"), it's possible to enter Leontes's mind and to hear with his ears what, to Hermione and Polixenes, are routine polite endearments. The disjunction between the reality and his perception produces some of the toughest, most fevered verse in Shakespeare, one poisonous image hurtling after another in a parody of logic. Ben Carlson, an actor of supreme lucidity, is especially good at the barriers this king erects against the reasoned arguments of his courtiers, not one of whom supports him though they all obey him. Powerful though this is, the turning point of the performance is Leontes's own, when he recognizes his error and his world collapses. (He loses his wife and his young son; the latter he never gets back, which takes the play almost beyond the bounds of tragicomedy.)

The subsequent scenes of penitence and atonement are intently, beautifully done. Equally commanding, in a role as straightforward as the king's is tortured, is Seana McKenna's Paulina, by turns his accuser, conscience, and consolation; she is, in all senses, a blast. She's also funny. These two performances are matched by Yanna McIntosh's Hermione, the best Shakespearean performance she has given. This queen lives up to all the praise the other characters heap on her; her passion and dignity when on trial are, save for one momentary descent into self-pity, superb, and her return to life is as heart-stirring as theatre gets.

This is an ensemble play, and the 16-year flash-forward to the sea-coast of Bohemia unleashes another clutch of fine performances. These start with Brian Tree's Old Shepherd, who doesn't so much utter his lines as graze on them like his sheep, and with Mike Shara, enchantingly blithe and trusting as his son; and culminate in Tom Rooney's shape-shifting Autolycus, tuneful, biting, and on great confidential terms with his hearers both on-and offstage. The production sometimes loses focus at the sheep-shearing revels; the nature-versus-nurture debate between Polixenes and Perdita is hard to follow, being played as if it were a personal feud rather than a philosophical debate. Dan Chameroy's Polixenes is otherwise excellent, both as victim and tyrant, and Cara Ricketts' Perdita is enchanting except when trying too hard to be. She's bewitching when, escorted by Ian Lake's eloquent Florizel, she returns to her father's court in a dazzling gold dress; the Turkish fashions that the designer, John Pennoyer, has dreamed up for the Bohemians in their rural state are rather less becoming.

Randy Hughson is unfailingly good-humoured in a double role. As the unfortunate Antigonus he's sequentially victimized by his king, his wife and by this production's spectacular Bear, which contains two actors even before it swallows him. He then does a turn as Time, the chorus, and I mean a turn; he's suspended high up in a harness, in whose clutches he revolves a full 360 degrees, twice, remaining beamingly imperturbable throughout. It's as if he's daring us not to believe; which is precisely what The Winter's Tale is about.

Some of the same themes -- art, time, children -- are quietly, impressively woven in Anthony Black's play Homage, which was brought to Luminato by the 2b company from Halifax, and deserves to be seen wherever it appears. Instead of a statue that comes to life, we have a sculpture that's dismantles: offstage but still with resonance. The story, based fairly closely on real events, raises issues of creative and civic responsibility, fairly and passionately. Christian Barry's production contains ripe, unforced performances from Jerry Franken as a late-life sculptor determinedly making up for lost years and, especially, from Barbara Gordon as his wife, who in both her encouragement and upbraidings is something of a Paulina in her own right.