The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare Page B

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Authors: William Shakespeare
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world is that the play is concerned with an idea of spiritual laws—that there are certain spiritual laws that, if broken, will be paid for. This seems to be a very Ancient Greek notion. What we did was create a world where a divine presence existed. This, for me, is in the play—when Apollo’s judgment is disobeyed, disaster strikes. We accentuated this in the trial scene by using the sound of approaching thunder as Apollo’s oracle was read out. So we respected the epic, classical gesture of the play without getting caught up in a kitsch world of men in skirts!
    How did you stage the moment when Antigonus exits “pursued by a bear”?
    Noble: It seemed to me that it’s one of those things you shouldn’t duck as a director. I tried to make it as amazing, fabulous, and extraordinary as possible. I had a huge bear and staged it quite vividly. It seemed to be the thing to do. When we were on the road we had this huge sheet that the whole audience held and rippled, so they were literallycreating the stage upon which Antigonus was walking. They created this strange link with death. Then literally from among the audience we had the bear coming out. You can’t short change things like that. It’s like people who say there shouldn’t be a good fight at the end of
Hamlet.
It’s just a swizz for the audience!
    Gaines: The stage was very dimly lit, almost black. You hardly saw anything but what you
thought
you saw was terrifying. A huge, white polar bear, perhaps eight feet tall with a ferocious face and tremendous teeth, ran toward the audience on that deep thrust stage—a slathering, drooling beast coming straight at you as it ran up the center aisle. It was so quick and the sound so overpowering and the scream of Antigonus so terrifying, that all together in this brief moment, it was shocking. Then there was a quick blackout and we saw Antigonus’ blood on the white carpet. We cared for him, and so that spot of blood was devastating.
    Cooke: We had a very scary, life-size bear and it came through the audience. We tried to make it as real as possible and not send it up. I think that all these late Shakespeare plays work best when you commit to the here and now of what is happening and make that as real and as truthful as you possibly can, not comment or send it up. As Shakespeare’s career develops it seems to me he writes more from a place of the unconscious. There is a mythic, poetic, divine, spiritual logic to the late plays. They’re not really naturalistic plays. I think it also comes from a lifetime of having worked in the theater and understanding what an audience will accept, and how far they will go imaginatively when a play has an emotional logic. The last scene of
Cymbeline
played truthfully is very powerful, yet on the page you think it’s faintly ridiculous! I think that comes from a lifetime of being an actor and writer and understanding that if an event is truthful and real, and by that I don’t mean naturalistic, an audience will accept it. It’s almost as if the play conjures up a bear at this point and we delivered one that was as real as possible. We also made it clear that Antigonus lured the bear away from the child—almost offering himself as a sacrifice for having exiled and abandoned the child.
    One of the distinctive features of the play is the sixteen-year gap between the end of Act 3 and the beginning of Act 4. What consequences did that have for your production?
    Noble: The first thing is that you have got to tell the story of what has happened. I think one of the wonderful things about the play and one of the reasons it engages an audience in an almost unique way is that it’s partly about getting a second chance. It’s a notion that chimes in so many ways with people. Leontes does these terrible, terrible things but he gets a second chance; that’s why it’s so moving. It must be like running over a child.

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