THE WINTER'S TALE

THE WINTER'S TALE
The Hermes Experiment at the Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone
13.12.2016


for The Reviews Hub

This 60 minute musical re-imagining of Shakespeare's problem play is a boldly ingenious experiment with the drama.

This year has seen many Shakespeare-inspired performances. Song recitals, of course, but also Mendelssohn, Walton, Korngold et al in concert with extracts from the canon. And it's not long since The Winter's Tale was successfully re-shaped as a full-length ballet.

This offering from The Hermes Experiment, though, stands on its own. Devised and developed during workshops at an Aldeburgh Music Residency, it seeks to re-interpret the play using musicians as an organic part of the performance. The text is ruthlessly pruned – out goes almost all of the comedy, the shepherds and the sheep, the beach and the bear. So the focus is on jealousy, joy and redemption.

As if aware that to absorb music and poetry together, but separately, is already a demand on the audience's concentration, the design is simple and subdued. The performers are all in black; their feet are bare. There are banks of flowers, and ribbons hung from the Cockpit roof suggesting a maypole or a circus tent.

The musicians begin at the back, but the harp, the bass and the clarinet move to a more prominent, integrated position for the staging of “Give me the boy” at the start of Act Two. There is movement, too, in addition to the music and the text, in a kind of chorus.

How well does all this work ?  The music and the words are subtly layered; sometimes one strand seems to move to the fore, to be supplanted by another as scene follows scene. Some of Kim Ashton's music is improvised, reacting to the verse and the events on stage. Some of it sounds more like under-score, of the kind which has been prominent at Shakespeare's Globe this season. Occasionally the actors struggle to make the text heard over the instruments. Leontes' first jealous rages, for example, which are wonderfully supported by movement and non-verbal vocalization, have to be shouted when a subtler variation in tone might be more powerful.
But the best sequences manage to be moving in a way that transcends technique. Perdita's wordless song as the snowflake petals fall and the swaddling scarf is passed to the grown girl, for example, and the whole of the closing scene, with its ethereal music and fine work between Perdita and Hermione.
The verse speaking is, for the most part, clear and intelligent. William McGeough's Sicily is strong, especially in his despair; Robert Willoughby is the object of his jealousy, and also gets some of the few laughs as one of the Gentlemen who share the news in the last act. Christopher Adams is the other Gentleman and everyone else bar Autolycus, a victim of the comedy cull.
Excellent presence from Sadie Parsons as a noble Hermione, with Louisa Hollway as a feisty, impassioned Paulina.
Héloïse Werner, co-director of The Hermes Experiment, is the soprano Perdita, her songs without words one of the chief glories of the scoring.
The music is constantly inventive – the prominent bass (Marianne Schofield) for the birth, the breast-beating, the pastoral harp (Anne Denholm). The musicians move in and out of the action, but only Florizel (clarinettist Stephen Williams) is both actor and instrumentalist.
The quartet's line-up – harp, clarinet, voice and bass – is itself very unusual, and Hermes have been assiduous in exploring repertoire and commissioning new work. This fascinating Shakespeare collaboration between Director (Nina Brazier) and Composer (Kim Ashton) is a ground-breaking, and often inspirational, blend of music, movement and text.

production photograph: Cathy Pyle

THE WINTER'S TALE

THE WINTER'S TALE

Shakespeare's Globe at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

30.03.16


One of the four “late romances” staged in the Indoor Jacobean Playhouse this winter – Dominic Dromgoole's farewell to Shakespeare's Globe.
A sad tale's best for winter, Mamilius reminds us, and there is sorrow in Michael Longhurst's sumptuous production, but there's passion and humour too, and a warm glow to match the candlelight.
The space is exploited to the maximum – actors and musicians all over the stage and spilling into the auditorium. Garlands for the shearing, bright light for Bohemia, but stygian gloom for Leontes' court and the marauding bear.
Insanely jealous Leontes is played by John Light, his obsessive rage melting into grief and regret. Rachel Stirling is his Hermione, coolly regal with flashes of wit and passion. Tia Bannon makes an excellent Perdita – on both sides of the 16 year interval [nicely narrated by Sam Cox's ancient shepherd], and Niamh Cusack is a feisty Paulina.
James Garnon, a regular on the Globe stages, extracts every ounce of humour from Autolycus, with what sounds like a banjolele in his hand. The music is a constant presence, Simon Slater the composer, with a versatile band in the gallery, led by Stephen Bentley-Klein on violin.

THE WINTER'S TALE

THE WINTER'S TALE

Royal Ballet at Covent Garden

12.04.2014

The many thousands who enjoyed Joby Talbot's Alice in Wonderland score will instantly recognise the musical idiom here. Accessible, heavy on tuned percussion, but, understandably,  less jolly and more obviously minimalist than in the earlier piece. The huge forces are conducted by David Briskin.

This ambitious narrative ballet reunites that Alice team to excellent effect.

Bob Crowley's design includes monumental columns, and the shadows they cast, landscape paintings as backdrops, and, in Act Two, a wonderful tree, dripping with golden ornaments, where we discover Florizel languishing faun-like in its roots. There is projection, too, with ships and storms, and a bear on a billowing silken sheet. A gangplank, a tall narrow staircase, which Mamilius [nimbly danced by Joe Parker] and his teddybear descend as he watches his mother's beautifully crafted solo. There are lifelike statues, too, preparing us for the climax, in which, movingly, Leontes, overjoyed by Hermione's awakening, reaches out to the figure of the boy Mamilius, forlornly hoping for a further miracle ...

Christopher Wheeldon's choreography is eloquent and often poignant – Sarah Lamb's Perdita is given some lovely flowing movements. And the [?over-] extended rustic dances in Bohemia are most enjoyable, pastoral but not pastel – the autumn colours have a Balkan feel. And the narrative arc is clearly and simply delineated.

It's not a simple task to deliver the poetry of Shakespeare's original in dance form. Edward Watson's Leontes, tortured by jealous doubts, is an impressively expressive performance, and Lauren Cuthbertson's Hermione is touching and physically convincing. Steven McRae is typically athletic and outgoing as young Florizel, but with some touching moments with Perdita. And Zenaida Yenowsky is a marvellous Paulina, a strong pivotal figure in the story's unfolding.

A new, full-length narrative ballet, bringing 21^st century energy and freshness to Shakespeare's classic tale.

THE WINTER'S TALE

THE WINTER'S TALE

Romford Summer Theatre at Raphael Park

22.06.12

for Remote Goat

For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, a "winter's tale" was a story of spooks and goblins, best told around a roaring fire.

As the Romford wind whipped up from the lake, rustling the shrubbery and snatching the words from the actors' mouths, I dreamed wistfully of that Tudor hearth.

This Winter's Tale was the 51^st production for the RST; it was an introduction to Shakespeare, and to acting al fresco, for some of the large cast. Must have been chilly for them, too, and picking up cues was clearly a problem. There seemed to be a feast toward in the musicians' tent, but their lovely music was too often stolen by "each wind that blows".

But the show, directed by Wendi Sheard, is an assured, dynamic telling of this often dark comedy, helped by the atmospheric sylvan setting – comparable with Regent's Park, I thought – "where God paints the scenery", as the old song goes. [One bonus is that we can see background action, almost off-stage.] And immeasurably enhanced by bold, nuanced performances in the key roles.

Victoria Abery is a radiantly smiling Hermione at the start, excellent in the courtroom, convincing even as the statue, in a gorgeous gown. Her advocate, Paulina, is beautifully characterized by Lorraine Ely; her jealous king, Leontes [Simon Drake], who "too much believes his own suspicions", is resplendent in brown and gold, confident, and always clearly audible in his soliloquies. And moving, when, a broken man, he collapses like a child on the rockery steps. His "brother" Bohemia is a blunt Rob Morley.

The young lovers, in the sunnier second half, are Jake Portsmouth, speaking the verse very persuasively, with Melany Dantes-Mortimer as his pretty Perdita.

Amongst the score or so other characters, mention must be made of Roy Hobson as the cupbearer Camillo, Morgan Simmonds as the "gallant child", Nick Lupton as a cheeky wide-boy Autolycus, and Jim Rimell's entertaining double as a fantastical Father Time, with his hourglass, and a voluble Steward, surely some kin of Malvolio. The lighter people – a pair of fleece-clad clownish shepherds – are cleverly contrasted: David Lintin's rustic father and Solomon Akano's streetwise son.

By the time Leontes found the painted statue "warm", we were so frozen as to be almost past caring, but we sat stoically till the curtain call, the whole cast, almost outnumbering the audience, stretched across the Raphael Park rockery, with a witty final nod to the famous Bear, fatal pursuer of John Lester's Antigonus.