Evaluation of a Winters Tale

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Nelson Truran

        The winter’s tale is a play about a king made jealous by alleged adultery which eventually leads to the death or misplacement of his entire family. But you already know this. We tried to take this Shakespearean production and, to an extent, modernise it.

Instead of a Royal Family there’s a “family” perhaps based around the idea of Mafioso but I think this idea was dropped because there is little evidence in the final production of Mafia-esque qualities. The play also included qualities  maybe sometimes considered cliché but loved by the audience this is of course fairy tale qualities  for example a narrator preformed by a childlike character, certain sound tracks around pivotal moments in the play, the general light heartedness of some characters.

Act 1 My slow decline into madness and superfluity

Time rollerblades on stage, sits down and reads from an old book about a story of two boys who grew up together and eventually became best of friends. The story is based around Leontes’ jealous rage, which is aimed mainly at his best friends betrayal rather than his wives. The lines in the second half of the play often speak of reconciling with his good friend after his wife died, which showed that maybe what was most important to him was his relationship with  his best friend.

Two of the main protagonists Polixenes and Leontes are beckoned on stage by Time’s speech in which they play as if children with sticks, Polixenes eventually  takes Leontes’ (my) stick and start’s a syndrome where Leontes assumes paranoia that Polixenes or perhaps everyone is trying to take things out from under him.

Originally there was a dance number that was about 5 minutes long but it evolved into more of a entrance tune where the audience gets their first glance at the actors playing. I had several different directions than the rest of the cast at this point, I don’t dance for example. I felt that Leontes (playing host) would instead lead the dancers of the second half and mingle. This is the only part of the play that I felt Leontes was truly relaxed and not at his usual level 10 stress level. Though a long dance might have been a good addition to the play here, we felt what we did was better for our cast.

The dancers then scatter into small talking party guests.

Polixenes speaks of his epic return home verily.

My character (Leontes) at this point tries to persuade Polixenes to stay, I first read this as a kind gesture that most normal people would say when someone says I’m leaving. But the belligerence of Leontes could show a rather possessive attitude towards his friend, or perhaps a napoleon syndrome to which he derives joy from controlling people. Polixenes and Hermione (my wife) touch each other inappropriately (to leontes) to which Leontes has a fit. The soundtrack for this section was the sound of a whirring spinning top to increase tension, I felt it helped me to break the silence and start at a higher stress level without looking ridiculous for suddenly shouting at the audience.

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The tension raises more and more until I burst out and start metaphorically mangling one of our loyal servants Camillo, to which every actor in the background sneaks out the corners of the room. I find at this stage that I should raise the tension to a high 9 and shout at Camillo due to the shortening of words used in the iambic pentameter and obvious inclinations in the language which would suggest that Leontes was getting considerably upset. At this point I was planning on breaking the plastic cup in my hand to show the audience how stressed Leontes’ ...

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