A Tale to warm the heart
The Winter’s Tale Top Dog Theatre, The Mound Lawn, Mona Vale, until February 24
Christchurch’s Top Dog Theatre has been handed a tough bone to gnaw for its 2018 Open Air Summer Shakespeare Season. The gristly object in question is The Winter’s Tale, a play littered with the corpses from many other productions.
Delve into the play’s core and you’ll discover a convoluted parable about rejection and reconciliation, love and hate. Shakespeare surrounds these psychological and philosophical issues with a plot of overwhelming complexity. Even the humour can be contrived and forced.
For a couple of hours, you must suspend all belief. The Winter’s Tale is not one of the Bard’s best but don’t let that deter you. Its quirky charm is bolstered by some of Shakespeare’s most lyrical lines.
In Elizabeth Grubb’s production, Top Dog Theatre sinks its teeth into all these positives and negatives with brio. Charles Grubb as Leontes delivers a strongly nuanced performance in which he swings the character between clinical paranoia and remorse.
Aaron Boyce as Polixenes fuses urbane charm with volatility and Nikki Bleyendaal as Hermione portrays a woman betrayed with quiet dignity and steely resolve.
Paulina, played by Roanna Dalziel, dominates the stage as a figure in which towering outrage and overwhelming compassion become palpable qualities.
The play’s love interest focuses on Perdita and Florizel, played by Richard Townsend and Pauline Ward, who display the right amount of self-absorbed daffiness to carry it off.
But Ward’s adolescent coquettishness can become overcooked.
The supporting cast is equally confident, especially Russell Haigh as the old shepherd, Regan Harding as Clown and Noam Wegner as Autolycus.
The only flaws were the production’s incidental music for flute and clarinet (too fragile) and the costuming, which presented an eclectic, but confusing mix of periods.
Don’t be deterred by these minor faults. The Winter’s Tale can still warm the heart, especially when presented by a local theatre company displaying such maturity. – Christopher Moore