The ensemble of “The Winter’s Tale” (Photo by Jason Williams)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Skylight Theatre
Thru June 14
Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, now at the Skylight Theatre, commences at Christmastime in the court of King Leontes, monarch of Sicilia. Those gathered for the festivities drink, party, and dance to the blaring strains of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Carey’s obnoxiously familiar tune makes for an upbeat, tongue-in-cheek opening. Of course, Leonte’s near-immediate transformation from benevolent ruler to murderous tyrant makes it hard to keep the tone so convivial. That whimsical beginning aside, this purportedly updated and contemporized production is a mostly standard retelling that lacks consistent innovation.
Tale marks the first collaboration between the Skylight and Play On Shakespeare, a non-profit dedicated to adapting the works of Shakespeare for modern-day audiences. Since its beginning in 2015 as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Play On has commissioned dozens of updated Shakespeare’s plays, some to considerable acclaim.
Play On commissioned Tracy Young, Tale’s director and “translator,” along with Lisa Wolpe, former producing artistic director of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, to collaborate on this adaptation which, despite a few fun but cursory embellishments, doesn’t go quite far enough in rattling and reconfiguring the bones of what is considered one of Shakespeare’s most problematic “problem” plays.
The most obvious problem, insufficiently addressed here, is that the play is split down the middle, between the psychological tragedy of the earlier scenes, dominated by the mad and vengeful King Leontes, and the second half, a pastoral set in the bucolic kingdom of Bohemia, populated by rustics of a broadly comical stripe. It’s a goofy bifurcation that has baffled scholars and interpreters for decades.
The play’s series of unfortunate (and unlikely events) commences when King Leontes (Daniel DeYoung), who is playing host to Polixenes (Iman Nazemzadeh), King of Bohemia and his best friend since childhood, goes mad with jealousy over Polixenes’ close but platonic friendship with his pregnant wife, Hermione, (Spencer Jamison). In a rage, Leontes orders his cupbearer Camillo (Shaan Dasani) to poison Polixenes. Instead, Camillo warns Polixenes of the plot, and they both flee to Bohemia.
Denouncing Hermione as an adulterous traitor, Leontes throws her in prison, where she gives birth. Despite the pleas of Hermione’s lady-in-waiting, Paulina (KT Vogt) Leontes orders Paulina’s husband Antigonus (Miguel Pérez) to abandon the baby in a wild and remote place, where the baby survives but Antigonus is devoured in short order by a bear in a hilariously low-rent costume that looks like a holdover from a Furries convention. Meanwhile, Leontes’s defiance of the god Apollo’s oracle results in a crushing comeuppance — the deaths of his wife and Leonte’s older child, a son.
The prolix plot picks up 16 years later in Bohemia, where Perdita (Misha Osherovich), Leonte’s daughter, has been raised to adulthood by her clownish rescuers, father and son shepherds (Vogt and Audrey Cirzan, respectively). Coincidentally, Perdita is being ardently wooed by none other than Polixenes’ son, Prince Florizel (Israel Erron Ford), who has disguised himself as a rustic. When Polixenes gets wind of Florizel’s lowly dalliance with a “shepherdess,” the sheep dip hits the fan. The young couple must flee Polixenes’ wrath all the way back to Sicilia, where the repentant Leontes—and a happy ending—awaits.
Capping off the play’s oddities and coincidences is what is, bar none, one of the weirdest denouements in the Shakespearean canon. Pauline invites Leontes et al to view the unveiling of Hermione’s “statue,” which after a few teases and delays, comes to life. Surprise! Hermione has been alive all along, tended by the faithful Paulina. As Leontes comments, before the reanimation, his wife’s statue is a bit more wrinkled than he remembers, but — hey! — the setting is pre-Botox.
Young’s direction is workmanlike and briskly paced. Among the cast, Vogt impresses with sharply contrasted performances as the perspicacious Paulina and the doltish Shepherd. In the lynchpin performance of the evening, DeYoung smooths over Leontes’ abrupt emotional transitions with assurance. Still, it’s unfortunate that the adaptors’ overly respectful adherence to the material didn’t segue more frequently and forcefully into flights of fancy.
Skylight Theatre, 1816 ½ N. Vermont Ave., L.A. Thur., 8 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 8:30 p.m., Sun., 3 p.m. thru June 14. (Check website for schedule changes in May.) (213) 761-7061. https://www.skylighttheatre.org/thewinterstale Running time: one hour and 55 minutes with no intermission.
