Monday, November 10, 1997
‘Winter’s Tale’ grapples with uneven plot, actors
THEATER: Shakespeare’s romantic comedy offers engaging
performances
By Michael Gillette
Daily Bruin Contributor
In his later romances, William Shakespeare focused on the
artifice and mechanics of the theater, applying a somber elegiac
tone to traditional folk plots while exploring the conventions of
his craft.
"The Winter’s Tale" is a member of this group, and separates
jarringly into two stories, the first telling of Leontes, the Duke
of Bohemia’s jealousy toward his wife Hermione, and the second
concerning his orphaned daughter Perdita’s romance with his
brother’s son and discovery of her birthright.
The Knightsbridge Theater company’s production of the play,
which runs through Dec. 14, does a wonderful job conjuring the
festive mood the play’s language and setting suggest, particularly
at the beginning of the second half when the pastoral harvest
festival Perdita’s adoptive family hosts is staged. For the scene,
director Nancy Jane Smeets fills the stage with rustic types who
sing and dance and create the ideal backdrop for the dewy young
love that proceeds.
The production is similarly masterful at the play’s finale, when
Hermoine, who had died at the end of the play’s first half as a
result of her husband misguided rage, reanimates from the statue
that Leontes commissions as a symbol of his penance. The
portrait-like staging of the scene, and the deft, tasteful
employment of music and lighting testify to the Knightsbridge’s
authority with classic texts, such as this one.
The play is not so sure-footed in its first half. Shakespeare
conceives Leontes on a small scale. There is no Iago to goad him to
his jealousy as in "Othello," so his folly is more plainly
ridiculous. His speeches, filled with fury and protest, require
some distance and finesse from the actor playing him. Unfortunately
actor Albert Malafronte plays the part very straight, roaring at
the actors on stage and preventing the necessary empathy to build
between him and the audience.
This is doubly a shame because it dampens the amazing
performance of Lisa Wyatt in the role of Paulina, Hermoine’s loyal
waiting woman. Wyatt maintains the perfect tone in a part that – in
the wrong hands – can come off irredeemably carping, and her accent
and phrasing suggest that she and the Bard are on very close
terms.
While the scenes between Malafronte and Wyatt are slightly
disappointing, the trial of Hermoine, which marks the first half’s
finale, is dismal. Actress Willow Hale, who plays Hermoine, matches
Malafronte in his over-emoting here at the point in the play when
grace and diffidence on her part would be the most important. In
the midst of this unwelcome detour into Sturm und Drang one can’t
help but find himself longing for the magical jump to "20 years
later" that follows the intermission.
As the play does reach the future, the audience is met by the
most interesting performance of the night in the person of Nathan
Clark, who portrays the rascally knave Autolucus. With his bag of
costumes and cape filled with fake jewels, ballads, and potions –
all of which he sells to rubes he meets along the road – Autolucus
is probably the shadiest, and least ambitious "author figure" in
Shakespeare’s oeuvre.
At first Clark seems to play him with an a careless naturalism,
lazily drawling out, and sometimes even swallowing lines. The
effect of this style soon becomes hypnotic, however, and one starts
to feel like the Shepherd’s Son whose purse Clark cuts while the
poor boy isn’t looking.
Several other performances deserve notice, like those of Di Koob
and Don Schlossman as the young lovers, and Jules Mendel as the
comical Old Shepherd. These three especially, along with Clark, add
to the drive and joy of the play’s second half in a production that
does good justice to a work that is above all about the magic of
the theater.
THEATER: "The Winter’s Tale" plays through Dec. 14 at the
Knightsbridge Theater, 35 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Tickets are
are $15, $10 for seniors and students under 25. For information,
call 818-440-0821.