The Winter’s Tale
Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park
8 p.m. June 9-11, June 16-20
Water Stage at Myriad Botanical Gardens | Oklahoma City
Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park’s production of The Winter’s Tale at the Water Stage begins pleasantly enough but eventually bogs down under its own weight. Maybe it’s because the story covers 16 years. Okay, the show doesn’t seem that long, but it does seem all of its nearly three-hour running time.
This tragicomedy contains two famous logical flaws. First, a husband suddenly becomes insanely jealous of his wife and best friend, and second, a statue seemingly comes to life. Director Kathryn McGill handles the cuckolding, but scholars say you pretty much have to accept the animated statue and be glad everyone lives happily ever after.
It’s hard to say in what time period McGill sets the play. Robert Pittenridge’s costumes look Victorian. The recorded music sounds contemporary. Anyway, Leontes, king of Sicilia, and Polixenes, king of Bohemia, friends since childhood, have a gargantuan falling out when Sicilia suspects Bohemia of impregnating his wife, Hermione (“bed-swerver,” Leontes calls her, among other pejoratives). This breakup leads to all kinds of problems and opportunities, including an old shepherd finding an abandoned baby, also known as the jackpot. If you ever find a basket containing a box of gold and a baby in a bearing cloth indicating noble birth, hold on to it. This find might propel you into the one percent.
Luke Eddy, a new actor here who will be a drama professor at Oklahoma City University, plays Leontes not so much as a king of noble birth but as a parvenu who made his fortune in, say, a chain of used-car dealerships. Or, considering when McGill seems to set the play, a chain of used-carriage dealerships. It’s hard to believe a real king would take the beatdown from Hermione’s friend Paulina (Renee Krapff) that Leontes does. The tongue-lashing she gives him — yes, a king would take that.
As Hermione and Polixenes, Alissa Mortimer and Matt Cheek bill and coo harmlessly. When she’s accused of adultery, Hermione tells Leontes she “loves” Polixenes only as nobles and good friends should. McGill stages the scene between Hermione and Polixenes in a way that appears perfectly innocent to 21st-century audiences.
Josh McGowan plays the rogue Autolycus and injects bits of real comedy into the production. Today, much of the humor in stagings of Shakespeare’s plays is academic or inanely slapstick, but McGowan evokes genuine laughs.
I won’t give away how McGill stages Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, “exit, pursued by a bear.” Well, I’ll say she may have interpreted the direction to mean “exit, pursued by Sasquatch.”
The production has dancing and singing, including an original song whose lyrics consist largely of “whither, whither, whither, whither, whither.” The song is based on Shakespeare’s text.
As with most of Shakespeare’s romances, everyone gets the proper mate at the end, except poor Antigonus, who’s eaten by that bear. I guess we just have to be thankful we survived the show and not become ursine cuisine.
