The Winter's Tale has it all, drama, tragedy, comedy. This year's presentation of Shakespeare Festival ST. Louis puts this lesser-known work out for all to see - and enjoy.
As with much of his work, there's a certain amount of suspended disbelief necessary, but give it that, and you're good to go.
Leontes, King of Sicilia, has it all - a beautiful wife pregnant with their second child, a cutie-pie son, a best friend from childhood who grew up to be the king of Bohemia. Friend, Polixines, is visiting the couple and planning his departure, but Leontes demurs. Stay a while longer, he says, but Polixines resists his entreaties. Leontes turns to his queen Hermione and says that perhaps Polixines will listen if she asks him. She's successful, but Leontes her charming him and laughing with him and suddenly is struck by a massive paranoid delusion: They're having an affair.
There is no reasoning with him. He begins to question his son's parentage, but is reassured by the boy's resemblance to him. Nevertheless, despite the attempts by his counselors to calm him, he's absolutely convince, and orders his chief lord, Camillo, to kill his friend. While Camillo prepares to do that, Leontes summons the queen, accuses her and throws her in jail to await trial, this in front of their little boy, who is dragged off, screaming.
Queen Hermione, don't forget is pregnant. When she delivers a daughter, the king, believing it to be Polixenes', orders the baby to be abandoned in some desolate place. This being Shakespeare, we know the wolves won't get her. Indeed, she's found by a shepherd. Hermione is sentenced to death for her treason.
The desolate place for the baby just happens to be in Bohemia, the home of King Polixenes, her father's now-former friend, but not her father, if you follow me. There's more, of course, wherein things reach resolution.
This exciting production pleases on many levels. It isn't perfect, but it comes extremely close. Charles Pasternak's Leontes is thrilling. His paranoia is so well drawn I was thinking, "Hmmm...schizophrenia?", his grief carefully depicted as the other side of the coin. His queen, Cherie Corinne Rice, is a charmer, warm and totally shocked by the turn of events. Chauncy Thomas' return to St. Louis as POlixines of Bohemia pulls heavy duty in the second act as things get thornier and wears the added age, when everyone is 16 years older, with a careful, honest performance.
The Sicilian chief lord and would-be murderer, Anderson Matthews, charms with his conscience struggling in the service off Leontes and then Polixines. His counterpart in speaking out, Paulina, one of Queen Hermione's ladies, is Rachel Christopher, who delivers speeches ripping Leontes up one side and down the other in heroic fashion. She's splendid. Her husband Antigonus, MIchael James Reed, tasked with delivering the newborn girl unto her fate, is the subject of the world's most famous stage direction, "Exit, pursued by a bear." (Watch for how the production handles the bear.) And it's impossible not to warm to Whit Reichert's shepherd. Even beyond these, it's a fine cast.
The lovely set, majestic and versatile, is the work of Scott Neale. John Wylie's lights give added impact, as does Rusty Wandall's flawless sound.
There are a few inexplicable quirks. When the action switches from Sicilia to Bohemia, accents ranging from Southern to Scottish to Irish appear. The costumes of the country folks there look, to my eye, more like Sicily than eastern Europe. On the other hand, the contemporary that opens both acts is just part of the scene and the freeform onstage dancing a real lark. It's a shame we don't have the bear dancing to "Uptown Funk".
Director Bruce Longworth has done Shakespeare Festival St. Louis proud with this one. Just because The Winter's Tale isn't a well-known play is no reason to skip it. In fact, its freshness is part of its considerable charm.
The Winter's Tale
through June 25
Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Shakespeare Glen on Art Hill, Forest Park
314-531-9800
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