The Winter's Tale, RSC, Stratford review - problem play proves problematic

There’s a deal to be made when taking your seat for The Winter’s Tale. It’s one the title alone would have signalled to the groundlings as much as those invited to rattle their jewellery upstairs back in the 17th century – it’s a fairytale, a fantasy, a funny-peculiar play. Perhaps the only play outside pantomime in which a bear gets involved. 

The plot breaks into two halves and, whether you know that the sun will literally and metaphorically shine after the interval or not, the dark opening scenes can drag. Essentially we’re witness to what would, these days, be called a psychotic episode, as King Leontes of Sicilia accuses his blameless wife, Queen Hermione, of adultery with his close friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia and then falls into murderous madness. It’s a fine lesson in the dangers of unfettered kingly powers, even balanced against another king’s protestations and a court less supine than some – less supine than some even today. The problem is that there isn’t a lot to engage us. Everyone, as appears to be the case so often on stage these days, seems to be dressed as if they’ve just been released from a Russian prison camp. Designer, Soutra Gilmour, is as spare with the set, just a big glowering moon to underline the lunacy at work. Yaël Farber, directing, hasn’t got much in the way of great speeches or much loved characters to act as a spoonful of sugar as this medicine goes down, so it’s a bit of a long haul. Maybe that’s why so many speeches are delivered at breakneck speed – I know I couldn’t make out every word, which isn’t really good enough for this house.

Bertie Carvel largely forgoes Learish histrionics as Leontes and is consequently all the more chilling in his treatment of his wife and his abandonment of his baby daughter (baby bastard he believes) on a foreign shore. His reaction – straightforward denial on the unsealing of the Oracle papers – brought another leader to mind, and not for the first time. Raphael Sowole brings real poignancy, and some welcome beautiful line readings, to the exiled Camillo, who retained his moral compass and fled into a sad self-exile he longs to end.

But this is a play driven by the women, at first victims, then gloriously triumphant over a patriarchy that indulged male jealousy too easily and proved too weak to fight its inevitable consequences.

Madeline Appiah’s Hermione is surprised and heartbroken at her husband’s accusation and, thick as thieves as she is with her trusted ally, Paulina (Aïcha Kossoko in show stealing form), it does suggest that the notoriously tricky ending may have a rational explanation. The two are resourceful and tough enough to have cooked up a plan to keep themselves alive and their daughter as safe as possible and then staged a dumbshow (Hamlet would approve) to test Leontes’ reaction to his wife's likeness, with a get out of jail free card of staying stock still if he’s not a changed man. The production is not so crass as to force such constructions down our throats, but it’s nice to have it available.

The second half opens with a bang, lots of them, as Kev Waterman's extraordinary drumming drives the play’s narrative forward in time and warmer in clime to Bohemia. Such is the transformative impact of Max Perryment’s music that the intervention of Trevor Fox’s Time/Autolycus (speaking, to no great advantage, lines by Brecht not Shakespeare in a Geordie accent) to tell us that we’re in a different world. Here it’s all gone a bit Wicker Man or Midsommar, except we’ve already had the madness and resolution awaits.  

Leah Haile (though rather more princess than shepherdess in speech and demeanour, Shaky as ever favouring nature over nurture, for Hermione's daughter) and Lewis Bowes (pictured above) make a convincing couple high on young love. Prince Florizel may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but Perdita has intelligence enough for two and, when the happy families are reconciled, you feel the kingdoms, now united in marriage, will have a wise queen. Maybe Shakespeare was so much in the habit of pleasing his patron that he couldn’t stop even after Elizabeth I had died.

Perhaps the play that the RSC itself, somewhat euphemistically, describes as “Shakespeare’s most mysterious” is doomed to be in some sense unsatisfactory no matter how it is done, the contradictions and inconsistencies too embedded. The best version I’ve seen remains Justin Audibert’s stripped back, one hour schools production at the National Theatre in 2019, which suggests less is definitely more with this one.

• The Winter's Tale at RSC, Stratford until 30 August
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