The Trinity College Drama Society kicked off their season with the annual production of Shakespeare in the Quad, which follows a long tradition of performing Shakespeare’s works in outdoor settings. This year’s performance was The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known dramedy plays.
The play focuses on King Leontes’s descent into madness, which causes him to banish his friend Polixenes and imprison his wife Hermione. The end of the act reaches a climactic point with the death of his son and wife, or so he believes. The second act changes gears dramatically as we flash-forward to the king’s outcast daughter, now grown up. At this point, the show becomes your typical Shakespearean comedy featuring young forbidden love, disguises, and a finale only Shakespeare could get away with: the king is miraculously forgiven his past wrongdoings, reunited with his wife, and everyone lives happily ever after.
King Leontes, played by Louis-Alexandre Boulet, performed the part so brashly that he overpowered his band of courtiers. The only players who seemed to match his intensity were Queen Hermione, played by Rachel Hart, and her friend Paulina, played by Madeleine Heaven. Both women excelled with the emotional aspects in the text and gave powerful performances. However, I was a bit miffed that the first act’s conflict between Leontes and Paulina seemed to be resolved by Paulina excusing her actions as “the rashness of a woman.” It was in certain scenes like these that the characters’ motivations and actions seemed underdeveloped and, frankly, weak. This is not one of Shakespeare’s literary triumphs.
The second act begins with a surprising turn as the play shifts to comedy. We are introduced to a host of new characters, most notably the rogue Autolycus, played by Kevin Wong, who did a fantastic job of bringing laughter and warmth to the stage on an extremely cold night—The Winter’s Tale was aptly named. Songs were incorporated, which managed to emphasize the comedic qualities of the play and offered a pleasant contrast to the drawn out Shakespearean prose. The audience especially enjoyed the replacement of 15 pages of text with a two-minute song, or “ditty”—their words, not mine. The cast as a whole was solid, with their fair share of jitters, but whether that was from opening night nerves or the fact it was five degrees outside is anyone’s guess.
Anthony Botelho made some interesting directorial choices, the most obvious being his use of mime to visually convey the characters’ internal conflicts. It highlighted the play’s themes of imagination and perception shaping the major conflicts of the play. While it was a clever device to help explain certain character developments, it also drew attention away from the main action, making some scenes unclear. I also question Bothelho’s choice to portray the king’s paranoia as caused by drug use. The result is that his madness no longer derives from the anxiety of power, but is more like the product of a bad trip from his snuffbox. This action can change the way we interpret the king’s development throughout the show, for better or for worse.
While The Winter’s Tale might be lacking in strong themes, or in coherence between the first and second acts, its actors certainly provided entertaining moments, which made for an enjoyable show. If you decide to see Trinity’s Shakespeare in the Quad in the future, I would highly recommend a blanket. Or four.
