Sydney Reviews

Photos – Michele Mossop

Known as one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”, The Winter’s Tale is one which perhaps better fits the bill than some others such as Measure for Measure or The Merchant of Venice, which tend to get staged a bit more often and with some success in balancing their disparate components. As the title of this grouping suggests, the “problem” lies in almost whiplash-inducing shifts in tone compared to the Bard’s earlier, better-loved plays that fit more comfortably into comedic, tragic or historical genres.

Indeed, The Winter’s Tale is especially problematic in this regard, as it opens with a particularly intense drama sequence that plays like a mashup of 'King Lear' and 'Othello', with King Leontes gripped by a sudden and inexplicable conviction that his pregnant wife and best friend are having an affair. As he rapidly deteriorates into full-blown paranoia, the king sees conspiracy everywhere, and despite the protestations of the queen’s innocence by literally everyone around him, Leontes will have none of it.

Things snowball from there, with accused friends fleeing, his newborn daughter declared a bastard to be banished to a death by exposure, his son suddenly dead, and his wife reported to have also perished in prison. Leontes regains his sanity as quickly as he lost it, shown the error of his ways by the fulfillment of the first part of an oracular prophecy declaring his wife’s innocence, mere moments after the mad king rejects it.

After such an intensely dramatic, tragic portrayal of the tyranny of a ruler suddenly bereft of his senses and the seeming powerlessness of his subjects to oppose an absolute monarch thus addled, this extended opening to the play is an absolute cracker. It could be up there with some of Shakespeare’s best psychological character pieces on the basis of these scenes alone. However, the rather stunning reversal of tone into a pastoral comedy for most of the remaining two thirds of the play is awkward in the extreme. While even Shakespeare’s heaviest tragedies will make time for comic relief porters, old drinking friends, and especially court fools, here it plays as though the clowns and nurses and manservants from 'Twelfth Night' and 'Much Ado About Nothing' have hijacked the plot of 'Hamlet' or 'Lear' and decide to set everything to rights and clear up all confusion as though this were the conclusion to 'The Comedy of Errors', complete with unlikely revelations, improbable disguises and mistaken identity.

None of which is to say that this lighter majority of the play is lacking in entertainment – far from it – but merely to illustrate that, were the plots not deeply intertwined, this would feel like two completely separate plays, as if the projectionist had mixed up the reels with those of a different film. It is a kind of theatrical bait-and-switch, and a fascinating, confounding one at that. Evidently director John Bell felt so, apparently trying to express the seeming unreality of these tonal changes by framing the play as some kind of child’s game, or play-acting performed in a nursery. The production design is suggestive of a boy’s bedroom, with a toy chest, bunk bed, a glittering mobile hanging from above and a building-block castle. Long after his role as the ill-fated young prince Mamilius is discharged, child actor Otis Pavlovic remains onstage, transitioning scenes with a wave of his toy wand and helping the older players with costume changes and such.

Is one to interpret this staging concept as representative of a child’s inner life? Is the play being framed as, well, “play”? Perhaps a child’s coping mechanism to make sense of parental arguments and strife from the adult world which a kid cannot fully comprehend? It would perhaps make sense of the almost dreamlike shifts inherent in the canonical text, as though trying to apply the randomness of child logic, wherein the rules of “proper” pacing and tonal consistency have not yet been learned. It is an intriguing directorial concept, if perhaps not a completely effective one.

The production has a great ensemble cast as we would expect from Bell, with strong turns from Helen Thomson, Philip Dodd and the ever-delightful Terry Serio. Myles Pollard is particularly good doing double duty as the Old Shepherd and as the rollercoaster of madness and remorse that is King Leontes. This is never more so than in his exchanges with Michelle Doake as the beleaguered queen’s faithful and stubborn advocate, her servant Paulina. Pollard and Doake have several excellent scenes together, and beautifully play out the loggerheads of their mutual indignation with each other’s dogged insistence upon their irreconcilable personal truths. These scenes are electric, made all the moreso by Paulina’s resolute conviction in the face of the inherent power imbalance of standing up to her delusional monarch, and they are worth the price of admission alone.

Although a sometimes mildly confusing production of an often confounding play, this is nonetheless a fine rendition of one of Shakespeare’s comparatively lesser-performed works, and well worth seeing for both curiosity value and the many excellent moments of high drama from this well-honed cast.


Bell Shakespeare presents
The Winter’s Tale
by William Shakespeare

Director John Bell

Venue: Sydney Opera House, Playhouse
Dates: 1 – 29 March, 2014
Tickets: $79 – $35
Bookings: www.bellshakespeare.com.au