A Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s so-called romances, those odd late plays that somehow overcome their tragic beginnings with hard-earned love and forgiveness. I’ve seen it before and been left cold. In fact, I have an unpleasant memory of sleeping through much of the Bohemian festival at the ART some years ago. So what made the production by Kenneth Branagh at the Garrick theater different?
Well, Branagh (co-directing with Rob Ashford and playing Leontes) and Judi Dench, for starters. But that isn’t necessarily enough. I’ve sometimes found Branagh’s movies tipping over into sentimentality, but that didn’t happen here. The production was, in fact, remarkably cinematic in style, with striking background music, and lighting that emphasized the depth of the stage (and a fabulous bear!) The opening scene is a beautiful celebratory Christmas scene in Sicilia, and as the characters watch home movies of Leontes and Polixenes we get an early introduction to the play’s crucial theme of the passing of time.
Tragedies often have us hoping that characters will get certain crucial information just in time to prevent the disaster. Here, nothing prevents the disaster in Act I, but that’s only the beginning of the story. Time, it turns out, will be less the impetus for tragedy than for the healing of its wounds. We begin to understand that when the action shifts to Bohemia. This production gave us a genuinely golden sheep shearing festival–Jessie Buckley is a radiant Perdita–with dancing that leaves no doubt that the world (to quote Benedict) must and will be peopled.
And here Judi Dench’s role becomes crucial, and not just because of the luxury casting that gives her the role of Time in addition to Paulina. Knowing that she is now 81, and has played Perdita and Hermione in the past, I couldn’t help but see the significance of these three female roles representing three different stages in the life of a woman: the nubile young woman, the wife, and the wise old woman. Seeing Dame Judi as Paulina and imagining her in these two younger roles was close to heartbreaking. Life, as a friend once remarked to me, is a series of losses. The casting of the play made that truth inescapable.
So time, the inexorable force that takes away our youth, is heartbreaking. But it also shows itself as the only way we gain the hard-earned wisdom that brings some happiness at the end of our lives. This production gave equal weight to both of these truths. And as Paulina brought the statue of Hermione to life, it brought me to tears of both sadness and gratitude.
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