Photo Source: Stephanie Berger
David Farr's meticulous and sensitive direction of the outstanding Royal Shakespeare Company ensemble somehow marries the stark drama of the first three acts with the playful comedy of the final two. He's aided by designer Jon Bausor's set—dominated by two huge bookcases—which allows for a coup de théâtre that provides an inspired metaphor for the darkness encroaching on that lightheartedness.
Greg Hicks' brilliant performance as Leontes salts the opening scene with sufficient subtext from which the character's sudden conviction about his wife's purported infidelity can believably emerge. Farr focuses squarely on Shakespeare's morality tale about how destructive unchecked power can be, both to the man wielding it and the society he rules, and the result is deeply compelling and richly satisfying.
Hicks' king of Sicily is a walking wound of jealousy, and the actor vividly charts Leontes' spiraling obsession with an almost unbearable ferocity. The moment when Leontes defies the oracle of Apollo is as inevitable as it is shocking, which makes the sudden deaths of his queen and only son, the god's savage revenge, register with primal force. This, in turn, makes Leontes' instant leap into contrition, a difficult moment that Hicks handles with great skill, shattering in its insufficiency. Hicks' work in the later scenes is equally good, giving us the spent shell of a once-great man, whose return to pulsing life is as unlikely and moving as that of his supposedly deceased queen.
As that queen, Kelly Hunter is all conviviality and high spirits as Hermione entertains her husband's close friend, Polixenes, king of Bohemia, interacting with him in a playful intimacy that could indeed engender suspicion, even though it's entirely innocent. Hunter rises triumphantly to the occasion when Hermione is brought before her husband to be sentenced, here while still wearing the blood-stained white bedclothes in which she has just given birth, mixing fire and steel with an aching vulnerability to great effect. Darrell D'Silva's hearty Polixenes sobers properly when John Mackay's decent and sensible Camillo, Leontes' right-hand man, informs him of the king's charges, but D'Silva also leavens it with an intelligent self-possession that's character-defining. (D'Silva's reading of the simple line "For what?" brings down the house.) D'Silva is later wonderfully amusing when, with Camillo now working for Polixenes, the two men venture out in Bausor's witty "Dr. Livingstone, I presume" disguises to spy on Bohemia's young prince, Florizel, then turns on a dramatic dime as the king thunderously forbids his love-struck son to have anything more to do with the simple shepherdess Perdita.
You could power the country's electric grid off of handsome Tunji Kasim's dazzling smile as Florizel, with Kasim an ideal partner to Samantha Young, whose demure yet spirited Perdita is clearly a princess even though she doesn't know it. Brian Doherty plays the traveling con man Autolycus with a roguish anarchy redolent of the music hall. Paulina, a lady at the Sicilian court close with the queen and often the only adult in the room, is a scene-stealing role, and the excellent Noma Dumezweni goes about her poised thievery with a ramrod rectitude and fierce nobility.
Composer Keith Clouston's terrific score mixes strong dramatic underscoring with tuneful, folk-flavored English songs. Bausor's costumes reinforce the production's Britishness, beginning in immediately post-Edwardian garb and moving on to Perdita's lovely 1930s dress. The English decorum of Sicily is contrasted nicely with the Scottish wildness of Bohemia, suggesting a society in need of an infusion of human spirit. It's just one more smart choice on the part of Farr, who has convinced me in a way I hadn't thought possible of the merits of this "Tale."
Presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Lincoln Center Festival, and Park Avenue Armory, in association with the Ohio State University, as part of Lincoln Center Festival 2011 at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., NYC. July 22–Aug. 14. Schedule varies. (212) 721-6500 or www.lincolncenterfestival.org.
