news
Theatre Thursday: A Tale of Two Winters
The Winter’s Tale has never been Shakespeare’s most popular play – not even his most popular late-period romance. It does contain his most popular stage direction, however: “Exit Antigonus, pursued by a bear.”
Reviews of Theatre Kingston’s production of The Winter’s Tale currently running at the Harbourfront Centre have been positive (see Now, Eye), so if you see one tale this winter, you should probably make it this one.
Director Craig Walker has set the first and last scenes at Christmastime, cleverly giving local adult audiences a high-brow Xmas-themed theatre alternative to the Aladdin panto. And The Winter’s Tale is an appropriate play for the season, given its upbeat, optimistic tone. Besides what is Christmas about if not destructive family fighting followed by eventual reconciliation?
As Norrie Epstein has written, Shakespeare’s romances are tragedies played in reversed. “The Winter’s Tale opens,” she notes, “with a husband’s jealousy and a dead wife, and it ends with their reunion, as if Shakespeare had decided to write an Othello in which Desdemona wakes up unharmed.” Hmm… Maybe it’s more of an Easter play, now, come to think of it.