Peter Viney's Blog

The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare

Directed by Blanche McIntyre
Designed by James Perkins
Composer Stephen Warbeck

Shakespeare’s Globe
Saturday 18^thAugust 2018

CAST
Annette Badland– Old Shepherd / Archidamus / Judge
Zora Bishop– Emilia / Cleomenes / Mopsa
Adrian Bower – Camillo
Priyanga Burford – Hermione
Becci Gemmell – Autolycus
Will Keen – Leontes
Norah Lopez-Holden– Perdita
Luke MacGregor– Florizel
Jordan Metcalfe– Young Shepherd
Oliver Ryan– Polixenes
Sirine Saba- Paulina
Howard Ward– Antigonus
Rose Wardlaw– Mamillius/Time / Dion / Dorcas

MUSIC
Robert Millett – MD, percussion
Matt Bacon – guitar/bouzouki / mandolin
Jon Banks – accordion
Sophie Barber – violin
Sophie Creaner – bass clarinet / clarinet/ saxophone

Stage for “The Winter’sTale.” Set added – the gold coloured grid.

The Globe can’t be superstitious. Casts of thirteen for Othello yesterday and The Winter’s Tale today. Compares to twenty the last time the RSC did it. As yesterday, a stage this big in a theatre this size could and should invite more actors to have a chance. When you don’t, as here, work seems to take place with actors communicating over yawning voids. Gender meddling is a given … the Old Shepherd and Autolycus are now female. I can’t see that makes much difference, neither is heavily gender-marked. A female shepherd finding a baby and caring for it is logical. The judge also became female, somewhat diluting the male cruelty to Hermione theme. Having a girl as the young prince, Mamillius, makes sense. The tradition is that in the original in 1611, Mamillius and Perdita were played by the same boy actor. Hence Leontes sees the resemblance. Those connecting the themes to biography point out that Leontes, like Shakespeare himself, faces the death of a beloved son, Hamnet, but then has a beloved daughter. It would work even better with both parts played by the same girl actor, given that Perdita is the larger role,  but they missed that chance, and I don’t think I have seen it done. Once you think about it, it makes as much sense as pairing Theseus and Oberon.

The Globe are pairing Shakespeare’s two chief “jealousy” plays in running Othello and The Winter’s Tale at the same time. The programme “Welcome” by Michelle Terry says they are following the “character of Emilia through Shakespeare’s canon” and they have a new play called Emilia in the season. There happen to be women in both plays called Emilia. One is Iago’s wife, one is Hermione’s lady in waiting. I guess both attend to a put-upon lead female character, and then defend them in speech. You wouldn’t base a season choice on that. Emilia here is a tiny part.

The Winter’s Tale is the definitive problem play, the problem being that the first part in Sicilia is a tragedy and the second in Bohemia is a pastoral comedy and they intrinsically are very hard to fit together.  I’ve seen a good few productions over the years, and many were not great. Basically, Leontes is an insanely jealous nutter yet receives no comeuppance at the close. The man is a paranoid bastard. He suspects his wife, Hermione, of screwing his best friend Polixenes and that Polixenes has fathered the imminent baby. Hermione apparently dies in shock at the false accusation coupled with the death of their son., So Leontes has their little baby girl abandoned to the wild animals on a bear-filled beach in Bohemia, which has no sea coast. The task is entrusted to Antigonus who gets eaten by a bear. Yes, I didn’t associate bears and beaches either, till I took the “float plane adventure” from Vancouver to an isolated mountain lake in a 1950s plane with a broken altimeter. The pilot had a picnic basket and a shotgun. There was a wooden picnic table on the beach surrounded by bear prints. Mind you, once the black flies had descended on our party, death by bear attack would have been a welcome relief. And so you can have a beach in a landlocked country, but a lot of people don’t know that, including Shakespeare himself. Fortunately shepherds find the abandoned child, name her Perdita and she grows up with them as a lovely unspoilt rural lass (usually afflicted with a Mummerset accent, though not here) for Polixenes’ gap year son, Florizel, to fall in love with. Sixteen years have passed.

The programme interview with director Blanche McIntyre is uninviting:

It seems very important that we do not do the classic thing of a flirty moment between Polixenes and Hermione, partly because that suggests she brings it on herself. To imply that a woman is responsible for a man’s breakdown seems to me politically awkward and probably not true, or helpful. Blanche McIntyre

Oh, dear. Great flirty moments in The Winter’s Tale? My favourite was simply having Hermione and Polixenes sharing a spliff, getting stoned and giggling at the RSC.  Given her advanced pregnancy, that’s definitely poor Elf & Safe Tea, but surely the point is Hermione is allowed to smile and joke with an old family friend without arousing suspicion from Leontes. The Branagh production carried that off well too. And she does just that here.

They have decided that Sicilia is sort of costumed, and Bohemia is here and now. There is a programme essay on King Roger II of Sicily when it was multiculturally Arab, Byzantine Greek, Saracen and Italian in the 12th century. Fascinating, and dictating costume, but  Shakespeare never had that in mind. He simply used Robert Greene’s source material, and reversed Sicily and Bohemia. The result here is weird and vastly over-influenced by the thought of those cultural combinations. Yes, Shakespeare plays take anachronism easily. Yes, Cheek by Jowl did one of the best versions I have seen in modern dress last year. The production is seriously hampered by abysmal costume.

Will Keen as Leontes – you can’t see the gold pantaloons and slippers

Will Keen is dressed as Aladdin after the genii gave him the palace and fine clothes, or maybe the final Disney wedding scene in white and gold. Archidamus, a Lord of Bohemia (unlisted in the programme) has modern red floral Primark 70% off sale trousers. Then Camillo is wearing a light purple dressing gown. Mamillus has stepped out of the Bayeux tapestry with Norman tunic, headband and hair. Paulina has a cloak in an early 60s curtain material design. The oracles are in Byzantine costume. It could not look worse. We’ll come to Bohemia later … the modern dress is no better.

Pailina (Sirine Saba)

The beginning acts of the play naturally fall on to Leontes speaking much of the time. Will Keen gives an extraordinarily vital performance, improved when he loses Aladdin’s jacket and sash so just white shirt (and we can get past the gold pantaloons). He quivers, veins standing out in his neck visibly, rages, shakes with emotion. A superb full on Leontes, matched by Priyanga Burford’s fine, dignified but sweet Hermione. It’s all talk, true, but then Sirine Saba comes on as a feisty, judgmental Paulina, the only one unafraid of him. She’s like a hurricane force, and for me will remain the definitive Paulina, the best I’ve seen. Incidentally, using Paulina as “Time” to open Part 2, which Judi Dench did in the 2015 Branagh production, is an excellent idea. They didn’t do it here.

So we have three great performances lighting up an otherwise static first part of the play. Nothing was done to add to it … usually there’s a colourful reception or party for Polixenes, or stately goings on. The six musicians were seriously underused throughout the play.

Priyanga Burford as Hermione, and Oliver Ryan as Polixenes

OK, I thought. We are stripping it back to the plain actors’ performances,as Cheek by Jowl did. Shame about the costume here, but we are focussing on three fine versions of Leontes, Hermione and Paulina. Polixenes (Oliver Ryan) was hampered by the incongruous white suit, and our reaction was odd. Oliver Ryan was in the RSC Dr Faustus at the Swan Theatre in 2016. I saw it twice, hoping to see the nightly role swop with Sandy Grierson at the flip of a coin show him as Faustus, but he was Mephistophilis both times. His accent and intonation shone in the Swan, but in the lofty spaces of the Globe we both found him hard to understand. The three other principles in those early scenes were crystal clear too, which might have thrown it into contrast.

The judging scene is a highlight. Not only excellent acting in the major roles, but with excellent background acting in the minor roles around. At this point they’re going well.

The judgment scene: Annette Badland as judge, Priyanga Burford as Hermione, Sirine Saba as Paulina

Then Antigonus (Howard Ward) is dispatched with the baby. Howard Ward’s several roles were all excellent too. I’ve seen bad “exits pursued by bears.” OK, to see a really good one you’d have to go back to 1611, and remember that a neighboring street is Bear Garden, and a building near the Globe is The Bear Pit. Shakespeare used a real bear. There were trained dancing bears all over London.  This 2018 bear might not be quite the worst. That was at (I think) The Nuffield Southampton, 30 years ago. A toy Antigonus was pulled along a track high up pursued by a toy bear.  This tries hard to match it. We have a photo of bear with a triangular cut bottom edge and bits of tape on it. It falls as a banner. Then a section of the gold painted grid erected for this play falls flat in the stage. You know if you have a frame like that fall, you do the full Buster Keaton and have someone standing there who it misses, leaving them standing in a hole or space. They didn’t. Add feeble music.

The shepherds arrive in pink sou’westers, and the chosen rural accent is that well-known pastoral one, Brummie.

Into the second half, and we forgave the bear in the interval, by praising Leontes and Paulina to the skies, and were looking forward to Bohemia. And again the cast were fine in their roles and delivery. BUT …  No magic, no color, no fun at all. We know Shakespeare had been inspired by a Fletcher pastoral scene that fell flat a season earlier, and knew that Bohemia needed dance, music. Lots of it. We had very little. When they did the dance sequence, they all crowded into the inner stage with two violinists and did free rock festival prancing  crammed together. No choreography, yet the Globe’s stage is made for major dance events.

Florizel (Luke McGregor) and Perdita (Norah Lpoez-Holden)

The modern costume interfered here, because while the girls (Rose Wardlaw and Zora Bishop) looked funny, they were not attired to jump up and down to two mild bits of pastoral folky violin. Cheek by Jowl did the full disco scene with music and mics, but of course that kind of music has gone from the Globe with Emma Rice, but it’s exactly what a modern dress version required. OK, the Autolycus (Becci Gemmell) pick-pocket bit was good. They made a bit of an effort when she re-emerged with a peddler’s stall with T shirts and sunglasses pushed through the pit. Having 7″ singles as her “ballads” was great, but they were in white card sleeves. Far better to have used colourful 60s company sleeves … and you can buy bright new reproduction ones.  I thought Rose Wardlaw and Zora Bishop shone in reactive acting in the Bohemia scenes. Perdita got a very good laugh commenting on the disguised Polixenes as “men of middle age.” But overall, Bohemia fell flat.

After they get back to Sicily,the production looks up considerably. The all black costumes for Leontes and Paulina help greatly. First decent costumes so far and they don’t clash with the Bohemian arrivals in modern dress. Also, we are SO pleased to see Leontes and Paulina back on stage after boring Bohemia. The newly-ennobled sheperd(ess) and son got the full pantomime dame pantomime finale gold Elizabethan costumes.

Then the statue scene was the best thing in the entire production. Hermione struck quite a difficult stance and held it.  When we got close to Paulina invoking her to walk, a wind machine (Shakespeare probably had Burbage lie on the floor and blow hard) ruffled her skirts while she remained immobile. Magical, as the author intended. Paulina’s near panic about Leontes noticing the wrinkles, then not touching the hand because the paint is not dry, nor kissing the lips because the oils in the paint will stain you were performed to perfection. Ah, on which I have to quote the Guardian review. This is the paper I turn to first for theatre reviews, expecting Michael Billington. But it was Arif Akbar instead:

When Hermione’s statue is unveiled and miraculously comes back to life, her quivering invites us to consider the possibility that Hermione might have been in hiding all along and that her apparent resurrection is a ploy to fool Leontes. Arif Akbar 28 June 2018

It’s worth going to the Guardian review to read the comments below:

It’s not a possibility. She was and it is. That’s what happens in the play. mazeltov

I know, it just stumps you when a professional critic thinks what’s transparently said in a play is actually a result of her own subtextual sleuthing. Next we’ll have Akbar rushing from a revival of Hamlet hollering “Stop the press!” because she’s unearthed the long-buried secret that Claudius killed the king. Cocktailsatsix

It is obvious that this reviewer does not know the play; I’ve taught it many times and this review does not make sense. My A level students would be screaming in disbelief. kickstart1

Another quotes the play:

Rogero: “I thought she had some great matter there in hand, for she [Paulina] hath privately twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione, visited that removed house”

Exactly.

The only time in the whole play where we got that “Wow!” Globe exuberance effect was the encore. They needed that earlier in Bohemia.

The Globe “Wow!” factor. But you have to wait 2 hours 55 minutes to get it. Jordan Metcalfe as the Shepherd / Clown in the centre

MUSIC

The poor musicians sat woefully under-used and did the odd dribbling bit of dramatic backing. Percussion was marching band bass drums, hardly sophisticated instruments for a skilled percussionist. The dance scene in Bohemia was just two feeble violins, unexciting and generic. Yet any modern folk concert will have really exciting instrumentals or “tunes” as they call them done by fiddlers.

Designers at the Globe appear to be merely a union regulation with no power in 2018. Under Michelle Terry, they’re not actually allowed to design anything. A football analogy comes to mind … I think of the North-East of England and football. Great clubs, still huge audiences every week. Some fabulous players, but year after year, inexorably slipping into relegation fights. They change their playing strip, abandoning the one the fans know and love. They bring in their old star player as the new manager to revive their fortunes and take them back to her glory days there. We used to look at plays the RSC were doing in the same year as the Globe with anticipation. Which would be better this year? Well, in 2018 the RSC has motored out of sight, there is no competition. The Globe, like those North-East teams, will always draw huge crowds. it’s a tourist attraction. This year has been a poor one so far.

Overall?

It’s hard. The actors run mainly at 4 star to 5 star, which I guess has to include the director’s stage direction work. Costume, weedy music, choreography, set, concept run to a single star. These production aspects are all very poor indeed. A tenuous 3 star then

***

RUNS AT GLOBE UNTIL 14th OCTOBER 2018

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

So much of the dialogue was lost here, whether swallowed in Keen’s muttered, ungenerous delivery or obliterated by passing aeroplanes. A Winter’s Tale that might have engrossed at the Donmar – introspective, conversational, lightly worn – simply couldn’t hold its audience in the Globe, particularly a matinee crowd lacking even the natural frame of darkness. Designer James Perkins does little to help matters, leaving the vast Globe stage all but empty. His only statement (and one seemingly undeveloped in McIntyre’s production) is to articulate the differences between oppressive Sicilia and rustic Bohemia as an awkward collision of historical dress and contemporary casual.
Alexandra Coghlan, The Arts Desk.com

4 star
Arif Akbar, The Guardian ****
Daisy Bowie-Sell, What’s On Stage ****
Stephen Bates, The Reviews Hub ****

3 star
Holly Williams, The Independent ***

In keeping with the new regime at The Globe, Blanche McIntyre’s production keeps things simple – a bit of folk music (rather under-used) and a costume change from faintly Middle Eastern robes for Sicilia (with oddly, the odd Elizabethan outfit thrown in) to contemporary clothing that wouldn’t look out of place among the groundlings for Bohemia … Still it makes for a sparse Winter’s Tale without much sense of place or atmosphere and no shift from claustrophobia to openness. Holly Williams

Natasha Tripney, The Stage ***
Laura Barnett, Time Out, ***
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, ***

This emerges as a production with which there’s nothing conspicuously wrong but also no real spark. Ian Shuttleworth

2 star
Dominic Maxwell, The Times **

We’ve gone beyond the era of disco meltdowns, neon signs and amplified sound at Shakespeare’s Globe. Let the actors do the walking, let the text do the talking. Fine. Good. Yet I left Blanche McIntyre’s meticulous and intimate revival of this tricky late Shakespeare play, this tragicomic fairytale, wondering if it didn’t need more than meticulousness and intimacy to make it come alive. What we’ve got here is a slow three hours that is nonetheless filled with strong, detailed performances.

Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard **

THE WINTER’S TALE ON THIS BLOG

The Winter’s Tale – RSC 2013
The Winter’s Tale – Branagh, Kenneth Branagh Company, 2015
The Winter’s Tale – Wanamaker Playhouse, 2016
The Winter’s Tale – Cheek by Jowl on tour, Bath 2017
The Winter’s Tale – Globe 2018
The Winter’s Tale, RSC on BBC4, 2021
The Winter’s Tale, Wanamaker & Globe 2023
The Winter’s Tale, RSC 2025

BLANCHE McINTYRE (director)
The Winter’s Tale, Globe 2018
The Norman Conquests, Ayckbourn, Chichester 2017
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017
The Two Noble Kinsmen, RSC 2016
Noises Off, Nuffield, Southampton, 2016
As You Like It, Globe 2015
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Brighton, 2015
The Comedy of Errors, Globe 2014
The Seagull, Headlong / Nuffield 2013

WILL KEEN
Quartermaine’s Terms, Brighton 2013
Hysteria, by Terry Johnson,  Bath 2012

OLIVER RYAN
Doctor Faustus, RSC 2016
As You Like It, RSC 2013
Hamlet, RSC 2013

JORDAN METCALFE
Jack Absolute Flies Again, National Theatre, 2022
Eyam – Globe 2018
The Winter’s Tale, Globe 2018
The Hypocrite, RSC 2017
POSH, Salisbury Playhouse, 2015

LUKE MCGREGOR
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017