This tale blows hot and cold

The Winter's Tale

Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Marti Maraden
Starring Ben Carlson, Yanna McIntosh, Cara Ricketts, Tom Rooney
At the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ont.

The Winter's Tale comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, with a cameo appearance from a bear in between. It is a tragicomedy, but not as it's done today, with laughter and tears intermingling. Instead, it's more like a Shakespearean double feature - a seemingly irreversible tragic cross between Othello and King Lear, followed by a pastoral comedy that brings (most of) the dead back to life.

Having learned to cut to the chase at this late point in his writing career, William Shakespeare begins The Winter's Tale with King Leontes of Sicilia (Ben Carlson) almost immediately struck by an irrational certainty that his wife Hermione (Yanna McIntosh) has been sleeping with his friend Polixenes, King of Bohemia (Dan Chameroy), and is carrying his child.

Leontes tries and fails to have Polixenes murdered, sends his pregnant wife to prison, and dispatches his friend Antigonus (Randy Hughson) to abandon her newborn daughter and abandon her to a certain death in Bohemia.

As quickly as he sinks into darkness, however, Leontes, with the help of an angry God or two, sees the light - but this otherworldly ophthalmology comes too late. His son dies, then his wife, the ship he sent to Bohemia sinks in a storm and, in the most infamous exit in theatrical history, Antigonus is eaten by a bear.

That bear, in a way, goes on to devour the rest of The Winter's Tale, too, and a completely different play moves in. A Bohemian shepherd (Brian Tree) and his son (Mike Shara) find the baby Perdita and the comedy begins.

Director Marti Maraden is more successful in guiding her cast through Bohemia than Sicilia. The main problem with the first half is that it takes the metaphorical description of Leontes's jealousy as a sickness entirely too literally. When Leontes goes over to the dark side, an eerie, metallic, Star Trek sound-effect is heard, as if the Gods are casting a spell on him.

Sweaty, bloated, weak at the knees, Carlson's Leontes seems terribly ill, both mentally and physically. There's nothing fearsome about this tyrant - he seems as much of a victim of external forces (either a virus or a curse) as Hermione.

But without a hero with a tragic flaw, there can be no real tragedy - only an unaffecting Job-like parable of a man repeatedly toyed with and tortured by the Gods.

Among the external forces victimizing the Sicilian court is designer John Pennoyer, subscribing to the cloak- and robe-filled Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings school of Shakespearean costume design. The scene in which Leontes's son's and wife's deaths are announced is almost fatally undermined by having the king dressed in a ludicrous fur-collared bathrobe seemingly borrowed from Cruella de Vil's closet.

Sean Arbuckle is very endearing as Camillo, who twice must prove a great friend to a king by ignoring his orders. And as Hermione, McIntosh moves beyond mere victimhood - she's strong, defiant and embodies her self-description as "not prone to weeping, as our sex commonly are." But only Seana McKenna, playing Pauline, the voice of reason, really makes any of the horrors hit home - she's scorching in her speech revealing the off-stage deaths.

Once the play lands on the safer shores of Bohemia, the production really comes alive with the appearance of a genuinely frightening puppet bear. Tree and Shara's shepherds, who discover the baby Perdita, do a fabulous job of lightening the mood, while Hughson, regurgitated in the sky as twirling Time and moving the action forward 16 years, is delightfully silly.

Thief Autolycus, who guides us through the second half, is an extremely charming scamp as interpreted by Tom Rooney - he breaks down the fourth wall, or, this being the catwalk stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre, the second, third and fourth walls, by panhandling in the audience.

It'd be a perfect performance, if only Maraden didn't make him sing. After the rousing, uplifting swing numbers of As You Like It earlier in the week, The Winter's Tale returns to Shakespearean songs as they are traditionally done - set to dull harpsichord music, sung out of tune and producing joy only by ending.

The romance between grown-up Perdita (Cara Ricketts) and Polixenes' son Forizel (Ian Lake) is quite respectable and noble as it should be, but I confess I was much more interested in following up on the electric menage a trois between Shara's young shepherd and Mopsa (Andrea Runge) and Dorca (Alana Hawley).

When the action finally returns to the Sicilian court, Carlson and McIntosh deliver the moving performances that we had hoped for all along. It's the bench strength of Stratford's current company, rather than the hot-and-cold contributions from director and designer, that ultimately make this Winter's Tale well worthwhile.

The Winter's Tale runs at the Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford, Ont., until Sept. 25.