Review: Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's THE WINTER'S TALE Makes for a Splendid Summer Evening

For its 28th production of free Shakespeare on the Common, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company has chosen “The Winter’s Tale,” a title that associate artistic director Bryn Boice acknowledges in her program note “is not one of the first titles one thinks of for summer Shakespeare.”

Also not one of Shakespeare’s best known or most-produced plays, “The Winter’s Tale” is being presented by CSC for the first time, in a finely honed, wonderfully well-cast production at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common through August 4.

Under the imaginative direction of Boice, in her Boston Common debut, the tragicomedy opens in the Court of Sicilia where King Leontes is raging with anger because he believes that his pregnant wife, Hermione, is having an affair with his boyhood pal and fellow sovereign Polixenes, the King of Bohemia.

Leontes instructs his loyal subject Camillo to murder Polixenes. Camillo, sensing his King’s descent into madness, instead spirits Polixenes out of the country. Leontes throws his wife into prison, where she gives birth to their daughter. After Leontes banishes his infant daughter and finds Hermione guilty of adultery, his son dies. Led to believe that both of her children are dead, and learning that Leontes has condemned her as an adulteress, Hermione dies of despair.

What begins as a dark, troubling drama shifts abruptly – the transition marked by perhaps Shakespeare’s most infamous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear” – to a comedy in act two that Boice cleverly presents as a psychedelic gathering. The mood shift may seem too sudden, but it does lift the static feel of act one and move the action into sometimes raucous comedy, with a sweet love story to boot.

In the second act, set in Bohemia, it is 16 years later and we see that Perdita (Clara Hevia) was not killed but instead found and adopted, and has become one of the most beautiful young women in the country. She has even turned the head of King Polixenes’ son, Florizel (Joshua Olumide), who pursues her against his father’s wishes before either man realizes that she, too, is of royal blood. Hevia and Olumide are a delight as the besotted couple.

Nael Nacer – seen at the Huntington and on Broadway this past season in “Prayer for the French Republic” – is a compelling, sometimes even empathetic, Leontes, the tyrant king. Omar Robinson is a regal King Polixenes and, in act two, comically on-point in a disguise that changes his perfectly postured royal look into one suggesting funk legend George Clinton. Marianna Bassham’s too-good-to-be-true Hermione is dignified, with proper comportment and measured line delivery throughout, even as she faces the severity of her husband’s wrath.

The act-two reunion of King Polixenes with the once vengeful King Leontes, which could so easily have been fraught with continued distrust and malice, becomes warm. Helping to move the story from tragedy through comedy to redemption and reunion are some of greater Boston’s finest stage actors – who are hilarious when they let loose – including Ryan Winkles as Autolycus, Bob Walsh as Antigonus, and Richard Snee as Shepard.

And elevating an already high-level Shakespeare production is Paula Plum, who commands the stage with ethereal power as Paulina. As she is so often, Plum is riveting and impossible to look away from in each of her several scenes. Tony Estrella is also a stand-out as Camillo.

James J. Fenton’s fine scenic design – staged on a towering set reminiscent of Brutalist architecture – helps set the production’s various moods while costume and wig designer Rachel Padula Shufelt captures the worlds of Sicilia and Bohemia with her eye-catching array of garments and hairpieces.

Boston Common is always a character, too, and on a recent night the threat of showers, undelivered, only added to the magical experience, enhanced by Maximo Grano De Oro’s lighting design, that is Shakespeare on the Common.

Photo caption: A scene from Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of “The Winter’s Tale.” Photo by Nile Scott Studios.

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