A darker, deeper Branagh returns in triumph to his natural habitat
ENTER, greeted with a hush of anticipation, Sir Kenneth Branagh. He was once the golden boy of the British stage. Now the ever-enterprising Belfast-born hero has weighed anchor in the West End for a year, returning to his roots after several decades of focus on film and television.
He launches his artistically bold, commercially astute venture with what looks like the most sizzling hot ticket of six shows: The Winter’s Tale. He takes the lead as the jealousy-seized Leontes alongside the great (Dame Judi Dench), the good (Miranda Raison) and the more than promising ( Jekyll and Hyde star Tom Bateman).
Although Branagh hasn’t been a total stranger to theatreland since he set out to make his name in Hollywood – he was last here with Chekhov’s
Ivanov in 2008 – London hasn’t seen him tackle the Bard since 1992 (a reprise of Hamlet for the RSC). A moment of high drama, then. Has he still got what it takes? Abso-Branagh- lutely. This proves a right royal return in triumph.
His Sicilian king is first revealed, as if in a flurry of humble magic, standing behind a white sheet that has been used as a makeshift home-cinema screen in a plush, velvety palace in the quasi-early 20th century (a lovely set by Christopher Oram).
There’s a paper crown on his head; it’s Christmas. What follows is a hideous vanishing act inflicted by the most violent mood swing in the Shakespearean canon – every aspect of the cosy scene gets dismantled.
Branagh brilliantly shades Leontes’s descent into madness. From pleasant grinning, his smile slips into a grimace as he observes what he thinks are telltale signs of adultery in the way Raison’s Hermione makes too many tactile pleas to his oldest friend, Hadley Fraser’s Bohemian monarch Polixenes, to stay on as a guest.
Within the blink of a deranged eye, Branagh is reeling this way and that, drunk with self-made poison, his speech faltering as the mania grips him and has him crumpled on his knees, writhing on the floor. His nearest and dearest become abhorrent to him: the price is colossal – his son dies, his wife apparently follows suit and their newborn daughter is abandoned, then lost. The ensuing act of penitence must last 16 years.
All the old virtues of Branagh are present and exhilaratingly correct: the clarity, intelligence and tight-lipped control, but what we’re getting now in his middle age (he’s 54), and what we beheld in his Manchester Macbeth, is a richer, deeper capacity for vice and darkness – the ordinary man thrust into monstrous, terrifying motion. At the end, we see him grey, withered, a broken figure who wails the most piteous, frail sound at the touch of the wife who has been “resurrected” to him in this fairy-tale-like play. The statue stirs, the dead are reborn. There are tears in his eyes. Mine too.
That climax is presided over by Dench’s wise, grave, still servant Paulina (Dame Judi’s powers remain undimmed, but at 80, an elegiac quality hangs around her every utterance). And looking as radiant as an angel – restored to a youthful bloom after a trial scene that washed all colour from her – is Raison’s dignified study in wronged womanhood. Music underscores the poignant moment – it’s a shame that during the evening (co-directed by Branagh and Rob Ashford) we hear quite so much obviously stirring accompaniment; it’s too cinematic, rarely needed.
The only major quibble I have, though, is that the show is running in rep with a minor-league Rattigan play –
– when the world and his wife should see this. Here is as fine an ensemble as the National or RSC could muster. Among the older generation, there’s splendid work from Michael Pennington as Paulina’s doomed husband, Antigonus (who exits pursed by a projection of a bear… hmm), John Shrapnel as the conscience-driven courtier Camillo, and Jimmy Yuill as the eccentric shepherd.
But this is a play about youth too. The rustic scenes in Bohemia are played with a refreshing bout of lusty folksy dancing – and welcome, unforced levity from John Dagleish as the peddler-trickster Autolycus. The bucolic mood is given its full bloom by the hardy presence of Bateman’s Florizel (disobedient son to the king) and Jessie Buckley as a luminous, Irish-accented Perdita, the daughter Leontes so cruelly cast out. The future belongs to the likes of these budding stars, but Branagh is no yesterday’s man. It’s great – nay, restorative – to have him back. Let not such “a wide gap of time” come between him and his natural habitat again.
Until Jan 16. Tickets: 0330 333 4811; branaghtheatre.com. The Winter’s Tale will be broadcast live to cinemas on Nov 26; www.picturehouses.com