Skip to main content

A Winter’s Tale or A Child Hath Found Her Mother

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow
Three Stars

The tables are set, the bunting is out and everyone is prepared to eat cake in this new take on one of Shakespeare’s so-called ‘problem plays’, meaning a work too willfully contrary with its own style to be dubbed either comedy or tragedy. Or, as latter day parlance might deem this dense story of misguided jealousy, emotional and physical exile and inevitable reconciliation; it’s complicated.

These complications are wrapped up in several other layers in Marc Silberschatz’s production, performed by Masters students from the RCS’ Contemporary and Classical Text course. As if Good King Leontes’ throwing his rattle out of the pram wasn’t enough after he accuses his old pal Polixenes of doing the dirty with his Queen Hermione, little does he know that his long lost daughter Perdita has her eye on dangerous liaisons of her own.

Silberschatz’s own adaptation duly turns the play upside down, with additional text by Thomas Dekker and inspiration in part from American novelist Kathryn Davis. So Polixenes’ son Florizel is here a daughter called Calantha. Both names relate to flowers in bloom, and Calantha’s disguise as boy-shepherd Doricles has a Yentl-like frisson as she tries identities out for size in a thoroughly modern kingdom.

If such a shift risks distracting from the mess Leontes makes of things, it also reveals him as a man out of time. The play is powered by a nuanced performance from Andy Camichel as Leontes, who looks every inch the small-town dignitary posing for photo-ops at the church fete. With Catherine King’s live British Sign Language interpretation woven into the action, there is fine ensemble support led by Jaimee Aislyn de Witt as Leontes and Hermione’s son Mamillius, with Eddi Asher’s Perdita and Emilia Wallace’s Calantha making the cutest of couples. The cake may be left untouched at the end, but winter is about to turn to spring.

The Herald, March 6th 2020

ends



Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more