The Winter's Tale

by William Shakespeare

seen by live streaming from the Garrick Theatre on 26 November 2015

This is the first play of six presented by the Kenneth Branagh company at the Garrick in the West End. Directed by Branagh with Rob Ashford, it features Kenneth Branagh as Leontes, Miranda Raison as Hermione, Hadley Fraser as Polixenes, John Shrapnel as Camillo, Michael Pennington as Antigonus, Judi Dench as Paulina, Jessica Buckley as Perdita and Tom Bateman as Florizel. The set and costume design is by Christopher Oram.

Dressed notionally in the late nineteenth century, the opening scenes in Sicilia show the court in Christmas mode with carols and an opulent tree, warm lighting keeping out the winter cold. But all soon turns sour as Leontes mistakes his wife's admittedly rather flirtatious friendliness towards Polixenes as a sign of her adultery. He becomes ragingly jealous, arraigns Hermione for treason, disowns the baby girl born to her in prison, and refuses all reproof, pained from the courtiers or furious from Paulina, until calamity strikes with the death of his son and Hermione's collapse.

Branagh is good at portraying the king's slide into self-deception, his body twisting and in physical pain to match his psychic distress. Miranda Raison imbues Hermione with dignified rectitude, while Judi Dench's Paulina has immense authority, giving voice to a powerful moral outrage against tyranny. Indeed she almost overplays her hand, as her oath that the queen is dead must be taken on trust - and yet subsequent events prove it to have been a deception.  

The second half of the play, sixteen years later (Judi Dench taking the part of Time to explain the passage of years) presents Perdita (the abandoned baby of the first half) in rural Bohemia, where Polixenes' son Florizel is in disguise so that he can enjoy his love for the delightful girl who is apparently only a shepherdess. As Perdita predicts, the idyll comes completely unstuck when Polixenes arrives, first in disguise, but then revealed as he castigates his son for filial disloyalty. Clearly, he has as much ungovernable temper as his friend Leontes; and there are signs of typical royal self-centredness in the ease with which he himself flirts with Perdita while still in disguise.

All in all, there are strange undercurrents to the play, whereby the fable-like plot is complicated by more prosaic considerations. A prince in disguise to take part in a pastoral idyll looks like a conventional piece of whimsy until its consequences prove potentially disastrous. A king in disguise to see what his son is up to is likewise comedic until his anger threatens poor shepherds with vengeful punishments, and too readily accuses an innocent girl of cunning designs. Equally, Paulina's years long deception about Hermione is essential to the final reconciliation scene, but to some extent calls into question her integrity; and in the meantime her treatment of Leontes seems overbearing and cloying. This is only to say that fable and typically convincing Shakespearean character do not fit together particularly well, and it is a tribute to this production that doubts only arise on reflection and not during the performance itself.

Perdita's true status is revealed almost despite the efforts of the swindler Autolycus, and she meets her mother, who is at last released from her long solitude. Hermione does not address Leontes directly in the text, but in this production the reconciliation is made complete through gesture. Much has been lost, but future happiness is envisaged even if it is tinged with remorse.