"The Winter's Tale" at BAM

This "Tale" was produced by BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), The Old Vic, and Neal Street Productions, under the aegis of The Bridge Project. In his Director's Note, Sam Mendes explains that The Bridge Project was born of "a wish for artists, collaborators and audiences on both sides of the Atlantic to experience one another's work, talent, and artistry in the theater." 

So, from Britain, Simon Russell Beale played the jealous King of Sicilia, Leontes; Rebecca Hall played his queen, Hermione; Paul Jesson played Camillo, a Lord who would not poison the king's imagined rival; Dakin Matthews (American) played Antigonus who is killed by the bear; and Sinead Cusack played Paulina, wife to Antigonus. Beale as Leontes and Cusack as Pauline were outstanding. Hall was moving at her trial scene, but lacklustre elsewhere. 

The other country Bohemia was predominantly populated by Americans. Josh Hamilton played Polixenes, the King; Michael Braun played Florizel the Prince; Morven Christie (Scottish) played Perdita who thought she was Bohemian until she discovers her royal Sicilian identity; Ethan Hawke played Autolycus, a rogue. Richard Easton and Tobias Segal played Old Shepherd and his Son with great liveliness and comedy.

The play itself is hard to perform. After the first part's intense psychodrama of sexual jealousy, it changes, after an interval of sixteen years, into a light-hearted pastoral. This production updated the sheep-shearing celebration into a county fair out of the Midwest, complete with picnic tables, guitars, and red, white and blue balloons. The directorial decision puzzles me. (But see the comment by nelsonnyc.) Ethan Hawke as Autolycus was not funny enough, and the young couple in love was not compelling enough to lift the dragging plot. The last scene, however, when Hermione the statue came to life, and was reunited with husband and daughter, was magical. 

Comments

nelsonnyc said…
If you read your program, you'll see that Morven Christie is Scottish, and Dakin Matthews is American. They're just performing with different accents because in this Winter's Tale, Sicilia is Victorian England and Bohemia is the post-Civil-War American South.

I think that directorial decision, which you found puzzling, is a wonderful one on many levels. It celebrates the mixed cultural roots of the Bridge Project itself; it contrasts the propriety of Leontes' world with the earthiness of the Shepherd's; and it allows Ethan Hawke and composer Mark Bennett to dig into some sweetly gritty bluegrass music for Bohemia.
1:32 PM
Jee Leong said…
Thanks, Nelson, for the corrections. I understand better now the aims of the directorial decision, but feel the same about the entertainment value of those Bohemian scenes.
3:07 PM
A.H. said…
"The Winter's Tale" is one of the most hermetic of Shakespeare's plays. Often, it is staged patriarchally, with Leontes predominating (as if the play is another "Othello", a study in jealousy). I sense that this version--for all its eccentricites--is really quite traditional. I once saw a magical version of "Pericles" in English and Chinese (Mandarin)in which the female presences were given mythological significance and foregrounded...and that brought a new depth to the female renaissance at the play's close. . "The Winter's Tale" has a female Hermeticism. Shakespeare plays with Her-metica, casting Paulina as the Magus. The return of Her-mione is the return of dark, female Hermetic magic and Eleusinian mysteries. Autolycus, of course, is the superficial Hermes: the confidence trickser, god of thieves. Paulina is the Hermes who stands between life and death, surface and underworld. The patriarchal version creates a tragic hero, a lot of scenes that don't tie in, and a dramatic climax. "The Winter's Tale" is one of Shakespeare's great plays, but it is rarely well-interpreted.

I sometimes wonder about the liberties taken with Shakespeare. Extreme musical links become compensations for not staging the deep levels of his work. I think the worst version I ever saw was "As You Like It" with a Pink Floyd interlude. I didn't like it.
4:42 PM
Jee Leong said…
Andrew, thanks for the class! You help me see the play in a new light.
4:09 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Thumboo's "Ulysses by the Merlion"

I've just revised a poem written years ago, a poem that delineates the different responses of four readers, of different generations, to the seminal nationalistic poem by Edwin Thumboo . Thumboo is reckoned to be the first major Singaporean poet writing in English. First, Thumboo's poem, then followed by mine. ULYSSES BY THE MERLION (for Maurice Baker) I have sailed many waters, Skirted islands of fire, Contended with Circe Who loved the squeal of pigs; Passed Scylla and Charybdis To seven years with Calypso, Heaved in battle against the gods. Beneath it all I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled, Travelled and travelled, Suffering much, enjoying a little; Met strange people singing New myths; made myths myself. But this lion of the sea Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail, Touched with power, insistent On this brief promontory... Puzzles. Nothing, nothing in my days Foreshadowed this Half-beast, half-fish, This powerful creature of land and sea. Peoples settled here, Brought to th
Read more

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Image
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato , 199 0 Since it is moving pictures, a film necessarily captures--produces--a process. It turns photographs into the making of photographs. It joins moments ("spots of time") into a Life. This I expected watching Cantor's documentary on Sally Mann's creation of the exhibit "What Remains." So photographs of a long-dead beloved greyhound "lead" to photographs of the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, to photographs of Mann's Virginian farm bloodied by the police killing of a runaway convict, to photographs of decomposing bodies in a forensic study site, as if each group of pictures forms an independent yet preparatory stage in the creative process. What I did not expect to see is the influence of the film-making on the photography itself. Mann begins to think of her exhibit as a "narrative," and wants the narrative of death to end on a more uplifting note. With such an idea in mind, she takes close-up pic
Read more

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC

Image
I am surprised by how much this incident is affecting me. I thought I have moved past my former religious life, left it behind in Singapore, but like tin cans tied to a dog it has followed me and is rattling me. I am posting the incident, and my response to it, here on this blog, because I want to remember that the past is not yet past. When Emeritus Senior Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong visited Faith Community Baptist Church on 13 January during a Sunday service, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong took the opportunity to deliver a hateful anti-gay message . Among other things, he said: We affirm that the family unit comprises a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children. This is the basic building block of society, a value foundational for a secure future, a premise fundamental to nation-building. and warned ominously that We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.   Examples from ar
Read more