'Winter' is Beautful

If you Think that Drama's a Drag, then you can't have seen the Vuw Drama Society's Production of 'the Winter's Tale' !

Productions of The Winter's Tale are often subject to a romantic, almost refined treatment which neglects the rich, cruel humour of the play, and tones down Leontes jealousy to a pale and temporary insanity. The scenes which introduce the young heroine, Perdita, are unfortunately played as sweetly idyllic and 'charming'.

The Winter's Tale is more than a bedtime story: Shakes peare is here in one of his darkest, bitterest, most perceptive - if destructive frames of mind.

Tony Taylor's interpretation has brought out both the grotesque and the pitifully moving elements in the play by using a sexual motif. Both the nobles and the peasants of Bohemia and Sicilia are seen as deluded by the myths of togetherness and love. The reality is Leontes' consuming jealousy, his need for complete possession of his wifes attention his happiness in thinking that marriage allows him exclusive sexual rights to another person. Or his friend and later rival Polixenes' attraction to the rustic temptress his son plans to marry. Even the young and 'beautiful' couple, Florizel and Perdita, seem able to express their love only as passion.

The bittersweet nature of the play is richly communicated when the superbly bawdy revels of the afternoon are followed by the satiated revellers dragging through the audience mumbling the refrain of the love song they had sung so exuberantly before. The romantic dream over, they're left with only their dreariness, the automatic lust and mechanical response.

Tony Taylor has seen his job as being a unifying force: the director as benevolent dictator. This has enabled him to make the production forceful, with actors, design and lighting backing each other up rather than clashing. The keynote of the production is simplicity, and multiple use of actors. The actors take several parts each, and the doublets subtly underly the dominant sexual motif. For example Polixenes King of Bohemia and accused of being Hermione's lover, becomes her judge in a court scene. The actor who plays the petulant Prince of Sicily is seen later as the grotesque young shepherd.

The scenery is for the most part human : actors hide behind tall flowing banners, form background tableaux, move in interesting groupings. Richard Russell, the designer, and Tony Taylor have explored the limitations of the Memorial Theatre, and have used not only several different lines of height and distance on the stage itself, but also come down into the auditorium. The audience took a while to unglue their eyes from the stage and realise that something worth watching was taking place beside or behind them. The lighting, arranged by Bill Turner effectively breaks the convention of the darkened auditorium, the lurking audience. Visually the play is rich because of its simplicity and the easy mover rent of the actors.

The only reservation I felt about the production was the failure of the first tableau to remain as background to the main action. The embracing couples, growing more passionate as Leontes became more and more frenzied in his jealousy, proved too distracting to the audience. Semi-naked coupling could hardly fail to be more interesting than mere mental grappling.

I have seldom seen so high an overall standard of acting in in a 'university' production. The three women - Felicity Day as the wronged Hermione, Cathy Downes portraying Paulina as a veritable 'audacious lady', and Gillian Skyrme's Perdita, a fresh, titillating bird -were extremely good. The heroine's roles in The Winter's Tale bring out the dignity in the human being, dignity that is absurd since it is always defeated. But Felicity Day's performance was intensely moving.

Shakespeare played locally is so often solemnly reverent- and too often dull. It was a tremendous experience to see a superb, disturbing play given such a strong, intelligent, moving interpretation — and to see it here !

— Cathy Wylie