The Winter’s Tale

Play (1623)
by William Shakespeare

With Steven Barkhimer(Antigonus, Autolycus), Marianna Bassham (Paulina), Allyn Burrows (Leontes, Old Shepherd), Austyn Davis (Perdita), Nigel Gore (Polixenes), Jesse Hinson (Camillo, Young Shepherd), Mara Sidmore (Hermione), Felix Teich (Florizel)

It’s not really a comedy and it’s not really a tragedy and not quite a romance. The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s last plays and in many ways one of his great ones, treats a difficult subject with ironic distance but not without anguish. The laugh that arises at the end is one that results from wisdom grown from pain and loss, so there’s a sense of benefit amidst the considerable difficulties.

In the beginning of the play it’s all about the ravages of jealousy. We’ve seen this in spades in Othello (done in a great production earlier this season by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project) but that one has a much more dire set of consequences.

Here King Leontes (Allyn Burrows) of Sicily is hanging out with his buddy King Polixenes (Nigel Gore) of Bohemia who is visiting Sicily and everyone is getting along just fine until Leontes begins to get the feeling that Polixenes and Leontes’ wife, Hermione (Mara Sidmore), are getting along just a little too well.

In a flash, Leontes goes from blood brother to enraged lunatic and tries to get his sidekick Camillo (Jesse Hinson) to kill Polixenes. Camillo, a decent fellow, realizes that Leontes is off his rocker and arranges for Polixenes to escape.

Meanwhile, Leontes goes off on Hermione whom he imprisons. Their young son, Mamillius, is so freaked out by the goings on that he dies. Hermione’s trusted friend Paulina (Marianna Bassham) then announces to Leontes that Hermione has died as well and he all of a sudden gets incredibly remorseful and withdraws into a multi-year funk of moral self-flagellation and reflection.

Sixteen years pass and the young daughter with whom Hermione had been pregnant when all this happened, has grown up. Sneaked out of Sicily to avoid Leontes’ wrath, she has grown up cared for by a shepherd (Allyn Burrows) in Bohemia. As luck would have it, she’s fallen in loved with Florizel (Felix Teich), Polixenes’ son, but when Polixenes finds this out he’s none too pleased because he thinks this girl, now called Perdita, is just a poor shepherd’s daughter. But the two young lovers are committed to one another and old Camillo, who’s now in Bohemia, arranges for them to go back to Sicily where, as one would expect, things come aright in a variety of ways.

The Actors’ Shakespeare Project, now in its twelfth year, has been around long enough that it’s getting to do reruns, which is great. They had done a production of The Winter’s Tale about eight years ago at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center that felt quite expansive and embracing. The audience sat amidst the action which went on all around and ventured up into the balcony of that space.

Here, in the new production, the space is more contained and the production, though lovely and appealing in all sorts of ways, feels more contained as well. The prior production felt a bit more like a wilder romp and this one feels a bit like a more sedate reflection on the themes.

The roster of good actors in this production is quite striking.

Allyn Burrows, artistic director of ASP for the past several seasons, plays Leontes as well as the aged shepherd and he does a fine job in both roles. He’s inflamed and unreasonable as the pre-repentant king and goofily very different as the shepherd. When it comes time for him to be the repentant Leontes again, he rises to the occasion appropriately.

Nigel Gore, who has done wonderful work with Tina Packer over the years, notably here in Women of Will several seasons ago, plays a warm and heartfelt Polixenes, a lovely guy who is wronged by the wildly unreasonable Leontes. And then he turns around when his son gets involved with the shepherd girl and explodes convincingly as a real asshole.

Steven Barkhimer plays the noble deliverer of the young Perdita, Antigonus, with dignity, and the insufferable rogue Autolycus with correspondingly outrageous humor. In the latter role he has a great turn stealing the pants off one of his victims. Barkhimer also is a great musician, and for this show plays some great ukelele and accordion, and sings beautifully along with them.

Marianna Bassham, another of the established ASP greats, does a wonderful job here as Paulina, conveying the character’s earnestness and courage with convincing charm.

Jesse Hinson makes a very fine Camillo, his nobility rolling off his tongue with clarity and grace and also does a great turn as the Young Shepherd.

As Hermione, Mara Sidmore is lovely and compelling, a vision of upbraided nobility that must wait its turn for much of the action.

The church setting of this production provides a nice broad theatrical space with risers all around, but yields a slightly distant sense of the action, especially because the set which, though quite effectively focusing the goings-on, also oddly obscures some of them.

– BADMan