Time Out Theater Review: "The Winter's Tale"
By: David Cote - Time Out New York
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Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" is back on the boards in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It's being presented by the Bridge Project, a new trans-Atlantic company consisting of both British and American actors. Time Out New York's David Cote contributed the following review. It's harder to find a more schizoid Shakespeare play than "The Winter's Tale." The Bard's late romance starts out like a tragedy of jealousy along the lines of "Othello," takes a left turn into pastoral comedy and then ends on a mysterious note of magical forgiveness. Fortunately, director Sam Mendes and his superb Bridge Project can make sense of the clashing genres.
"The Winter's Tale" is running in repertory at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with a fine revival of "The Cherry Orchard." It's easy to see why Mendes chose this pair: both mix laughter and melancholy, hope and regret, to tell stories of deluded people lost in lies.
The first half of this play is pretty grim stuff. Leontes, king of Sicilia, is played by the marvelous Simon Russell Beale. Beale may look like a teddy bear, but he makes a terrifying Leontes, who grows insanely paranoid about his beautiful wife Hermione, played by the statuesque Rebecca Hall. Leontes throws Hermione in jail and banishes their newborn daughter, whom he thinks is illegitimate.
After intermission, the tone switches abruptly and the play takes place in the happy-go-lucky land of Bohemia, where Leontes's daughter Perdita is now a young woman, who falls in love with the king of Bohemia's son. Through some far-fetched but charming plot machinations, Perdita ends up back in Sicilia with her father.
On hand throughout this second half is the unexpectedly hilarious Ethan Hawke, playing a guitar-strumming, pickpocketing rogue named Autolycus. London stage grande dame Sinéad Cusack is steely and powerful as Paula, Hermione's friend and defender.
In case you're wondering, it all ends happily. Let's remember that Elizabethans didn't have the same notions we do about what constitutes a well-made play. Director Sam Mendes orchestrates the shifts in tone with tremendous sensitivity, resulting in an exquisitely touching night of gorgeous images and verse.
To protect anyone who has never read or seen "The Winter's Tale," I don't want to spoil its mystical ending, which plucks at the heartstrings. Even those of us who have heard our share of "The Winter's Tale" may find ourselves dabbing away a tear or two.