AN OMINOUS , but always beautiful moon hangs over the action in this spirited and monumentally staged reading of The Winter’s Tale, its very presence seeming to affect the tides of man as well as helping to mark the passing of time.
Beneath it the action of Shakespeare’s puzzling but persuasive tale plays out in a fairly narrow colour palette dimmed by moonlight and a persistent fog.
There is a strong visual foundation to director Yael Farber’s production, a constant presence of movement and dance set against broad stage pictures and human tableaux.
An impressive technical contribution supports the acting. Snow falls steadily from above, fire bursts from the ground sending alarming blasts of heat through the auditorium and, as we’ve become used to this season, there’s water in the design – this time in the form of an extended trough to be walked through with no apparent purpose.
For all the complexities of the movement and staging throughout the early stages the over-riding sense in one of noise. There’s a passion in the acting which, when stretched out over the lengthy arguments of the text results in an awful lot of shouting.
Jealousy, its repudiation, the misguided judgements and the anguished reactions to that are all handled at full volume with little to interrupt the torrent by way of contrast.
Bertie Carvel’s Leontes pitches himself at a level of unhinged paranoia from the start and stays there managing to find commendable nuances in quite a narrow band. Madeline Appiah as his queen is equally forceful, a mix of power and indignation. Plenty to admire in both performances and no danger of either going unnoticed.
There is robust support throughout the company, particularly when it comes to the movement, under Imogen Knight, which helps turn noise into spectacle. A fine and varied soundtrack by Max Perryment underpins both the dance and, without ever becoming annoyingly intrusive, the lengthier passages of the discursive scenes.
In some respects this, as befits a time when the nation seems to have gone football crazy once more, is a game of two halves. The bombast of the first gives way to a more subtle, measured tone in the second and is all the more successful for making the transition.
Trevor Fox as a kind of itinerant street hawker commenting somewhat disdainfully on what happens before him, threatens to steal the show as well as a few wallets in a scene of joyfully welcome comedy, but the focus of the production is never really in danger of tilting off its axis.
The move from statuesque despair to a slightly brittle redemption is subtly handled and there’s a sense of palpable relief at having got there.
Packed with very pleasing set pieces this is a show which satisfies on all levels. With so much on offer even the occasional slightly tricksy moments can be forgiven. Perhaps after all, despite the intricacies of the machinations on offer, it is the result that matters.
Matthew Salisbury
