An uneasy shift from horror story to fantasy

The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays to get right, with its convoluted language and uneasy shift from horror story, in which a child dies, to redemptive fantasy, in which the impossible happens and the unforgiveable is forgiven.

In the first half it’s like Othello on speed, the anti-hero king Leontes going from loving husband and father to jealous psychopath in the blink of an eye. In the second half it’s like an Oklahoma- style hoe-down mashed up with It’s a Wonderful

Life, the stage ultimately bathed in sentimental tears.

Its director, Michael Longhurst, has an admirable cast at his disposal, with the brooding John Light, as Leontes, Rachael Stirling (pictured), as his wronged wife Hermione, and Niamh Cusack, as the cruel-kind angel of redemption Paulina. He also has the magic of the Wanamaker theatre, based on the Blackfriars theatre for which Shakespeare wrote the play, with its intimate surroundings and candle-lit stage.

The trick with The Winter’s Tale is to make Leontes sympathetic enough that you feel that the sudden rage with which he destroys his family is the sign of a noble mind o’ erth-rown. I’m not sure that Light achieves this.

Stirling, however, electrifies the stage with a masterclass in sane feminine strength, while Cusack’s Paulina is another essay in female steeliness, her delivery dripping with sardonic wit and, finally, bathed in liberating kindness.

As to the crucial stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear”, it happens in near darkness and is the most spine-chilling enactment of this difficult moment I have seen.