TheatreguideLondon
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The TheatreguideLondon Review
The Winter's Tale
Roundhouse Winter 2010-2011
(Reminder: a sudden attack of jealousy makes a king accuse his queen of infidelity and send their infant child to be abandoned. The baby is saved, grows up and is reunited with her chastened father.)
Much of the power of the evening comes from the beautifully nuanced performance of Greg Hicks as Leontes. Though the actor doesn't solve the almost impossible problem of the king's instant and unprovoked jealousy, Hicks does make us feel the man's anguish, even when he is angriest or most outrageous, so that we sense a man who has backed himself into an emotional corner he doesn't really want to be in.
Our awareness of that pain makes us see Leontes as the victim of his obsession rather than as a villain, and so he never fully loses our sympathy. And this prepares us for the play's immensely charitable vision that lets him earn the right to a happy ending through suffering and regret.
Kelly Hunter has a strong scene defending herself as the wrongly accused queen, but the real co-star of the play is Noma Dumezweni as Paulina, the queen's strongest supporter, who takes it on herself to tell Leontes he is wrong and to twist the knife of his regret.
Dumezweni makes her a formidable figure, the sort of woman you would very much prefer to have on your side than against you, and yet shows the depths and complexity of her attacks on the king, which are leading him toward his purification through suffering.
The middle section of the play is a pastoral interlude of the romance of the now-grown daughter and her swain. I've seen it played more brightly and comically than here, but director Farr rightly notes that it is set in autumn and gives it an air of quiet peace nicely appropriate to the play's theme of healing and reconciliation.
Tunji Kasim and Samantha Young are fairly faceless as the young lovers, but sufficiently attractive to carry the sequence. The weak link here is Brian Doherty's Autolycus, directed and played as a rather unattractive crook and not the loveable rogue he has to be to support his overlong comic interludes.
(A side note: this play has one of the most notorious stage directions in all of world drama, as the character leaving the infant princess to be found must 'Exit, pursued by a bear.' Not only is this production's bear one of the best I've ever seen, but director Farr touchingly allows the character to die bravely.)
Gerald Berkowitz
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Review - Winter's Tale - RSC at Roundhouse 2010
