There’s a lot to admire in Daniel Sullivan’s spirited new production of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, now playing at the Public Theater’s Delacorte Theater in Central Park. There’s also just a lot of one of the Bard’s more problematic plays for audiences to process: The show runs just under three and a half hours, longer if there are any weather breaks, which is entirely too long for an al fresco summer production.
Repetition slows things down just about everywhere, particularly in the more pastoral, comedic second act where Steven Skybell struggles to wring laughs from the long speeches of the conniving trickster Autolycus. Even in the fleeter-footed first act, though, we must endure a good deal of redundancy in setting up the plot. Sicilia’s jealous King Leontes (Raúl Esparza) has bizarrely accused his devoted and visibly pregnant wife, Hermione (Lily Rabe), of treason and adultery with his childhood BFF Polixenes (Gilbert Owuor). He’s ordered his loyal servant Camillo (Teagle F. Bougere) to kill Polixenes but instead the two flee to his native Bohemia. Leontes also orders that his newborn daughter be left for dead in the wilderness. Esparza’s descent into envy-fueled madness veers close to the cartoonish before giving way to abject guilt and repentance when the Oracle of Delphi delivers heaven-sent confirmation of Hermione’s innocence.
Lily Rabe is remarkable as Hermione, a woman who undergoes many shifts over the course of the show. We first see her as the charming hostess who persuades Polixenes to extend his visit (after Leontes’s own entreaties suspiciously fall short). We then see her brimming with the befuddlement and then righteous indignation of the wrongly accused, further undone by the news that her son (Matthew Eby) has died and her daughter has likely perished as well. In the show’s dramatic final scene, Rabe reappears as a statue — with alabaster-white makeup, draped in cloth like carved marble, and sitting stock still in an awkward pose for at least five minutes. And then, with a shift in Bradley King’s lighting that restores color to her face, she suddenly spring back to life to kick off one of the Bard’s more mystical (and unexpected) happy endings.
Other standouts in the cast include Marsha Stephanie Blake as Hermione’s loyal friend who’s unafraid to speak to truth to power; Bougere as Camillo, the servant who signals with his looks to the audience that there should be some boundaries when it comes to loyalty tests from tyrannical bosses; and Michael Khalid Karadsheh as the gullible Bohemian shepherd and stepbrother of Hermione’s daughter who gets caught up in Act 2 scheming.
But The Winter’s Tale remains a lesser play that’s tricky to pull off. The tonal shift and 16-year time jump between acts still induces whiplash, but Sullivan manages to draw some parallels between the two halves. We see good king Polixenes gripped by short-sightedness not unlike Leontes’, actively trying to thwart the budding romance between his princely son (Daniel Kyri) and the ethereal shepherdess (Isabela Ferrer) who will later be revealed as the long-lost princess of Sicilia. We also get more scenes played for comedy, many of which don’t hold up as well for modern audiences, as well as after-the-fact recitation of some key plot points.
There’s a simplicity to Maruti Evans’s set design and Linda Cho’s costumes that verges on Renaissance Fair lite — though I appreciated the subtle all-too-brief appearance of a giant shadow-puppet bear hovering over Skybell’s Antigonus just after he has dropped off the basket with Leontes’s abandoned daughter. (The moment replicates Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction: Exit, pursued by a bear.) It’s only later that we learn the wretched fate of Leontes’s all-too-obedient servant. The Winter’s Tale is a show full of tragedy, tyranny, and comedy, where characters get their comeuppance (but not always the ones most deserving of it). It’s a bit of a muddle, to be honest, and this production revels in its messiness in ways that both captivate and frustrate. ★★★☆☆
THE WINTER’S TALE
Delacorte Theatre, Central Park
Running time: 3 hours, 25 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets available for free through five different locations/methods through August 23