The Winter’s Tale with a little spring in its step!
The Winter’s Tale (iPlayer) Verdict: More commendable than enjoyable
SHAKESPEARE’S The Winter’s Tale is sometimes categorised as a ‘problem’ play. The problem is that some scholars think it’s an unhappy mix of tragedy and comedy.
All’s not well that doesn’t end as they like it, in the story of jealous King Leontes, who turns on his innocent wife, puts her on trial for adultery and abandons their newborn babe on a mountain.
The real problem, though, is how to help an audience enjoy a story that’s a freewheeling yarn playing fast and loose with time, space and a prophetic Oracle to achieve its magical conclusion.
The solution of the RSC’s Deputy Artistic Director, Erica Whyman, is to set the play in the bleak 1940s and turn it into a dark psychological parable.
The show, featuring Joseph Kloska as the raving monarch and Kemi-Bo Jacobs as his hapless wife, was scheduled for production last year, but has been rerehearsed and filmed (with the same cast) for screening on BBC iPlayer.
Kloska resists the temptation to play Leontes as an alpha-misogynist and instead seeks to connect with his character’s inner turmoil. I wonder if he might’ve been better off just trying to scare the bejesus out of everyone, because no one seems overly threatened by this hair-trigger tyrant who’s convinced his wife has suddenly turned into a ‘bed swerver’.
Jacobs behaves with pride and poise during her husband’s Fawlty-esque meltdowns.
It’s left to the abandoned daughter (Georgia Landers) and the king of Bohemia’s son (Assad Zaman) to bring about the play’s fairy tale resolution, 16 years later.
They have grown up in a strawsucking idyll of swains and shepherds — she a vigorous lass in a floral dress, he a bug-eyed scarecrow with black curls springing from beneath his peasant’s hat.
Anne Odeke has the toughest job (to my mind), playing itinerant jester Autolycus, who motors about on a Sixties Vespa. Even with the aid of a custard pie gag, Shakespeare’s ‘comic’ wordplay often rolls along like a tumbleweed — especially without an audience to play off.
The famous stage direction ‘exit pursued by a bear’ is done with a set of growling zombies. Luckily, I knew what was going on, thanks to having studied the play at school. In the end, though, I still found it more commendable than enjoyable.
If you’re in the mood for something more straightforward, Cells ( mettatheatre.co.uk, ★★★II) is a short musical film that puts the ‘opera’ into soap opera. It’s the story of a timid young biology student (Lem Knights), looking for the father he never knew; and a lab assistant (Clive Rowe) with a passion for ladies who cook.
THEY
make a good-natured couple: Rowe’s inner panto dame seems about to burst out of his lab coat; while Knight’s big smile suggests he won’t stay timid for long.
Together, they triumph over Ben Glasstone’s hiccupping guitar and piano music . . . and some alarming lyrics such as: ‘He’s looking at me like I’m gravy and chips.’
I was also tickled by Isla van Tricht’s Zoom play Money( southwark play house .★★★ II ), which takes us inside a meeting of young trustees from an imaginary inner-city charity.
They’ve been offered £1 million . . . from a foundation that deals in unsustainable palm oil. An intriguing moral maze that descends into a slanging match worthy of Handforth Parish Council.