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Jul. 8th, 2020 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther...and, as is sometimes the case, as soon as I said definitely that I didn't think I'd be watching any more of the theatre streams, the brain weasels packed up and went on holiday and I was finally able to watch the stream of The Winter's Tale that I've been putting off for a couple of months.
This is the other stream of The Winter's Tale, the one from Cheek by Jowl, which means that it's now happened twice in the past year that I've seen two productions of a problem play where the first production was in a Globe-replica theatre and leaned comedic and the second production was by Cheek by Jowl and leaned dramatic/discomforting.
This one wasn't as unrelenting as the Cheek by Jowl production of Measure for Measure: it did keep some of the comedy of the Bohemian scenes, and there was a satisfying ending. It was more comfortable with the drama than with the comedy, though, I thought, and it seemed to want to make sure that we knew the comedy was limited to that one section of the play: when the action transfers from Bohemia back to Sicilia, there's a gratuitously unpleasant bit of interpolated stage business to signal that the funny bit's over and the serious bit is starting up again. (Which, actually, I disagree with in principle, even if I hadn't disliked the specific execution: I'm of the school of thought which says that part of the point of the play is that once it becomes a comedy in Bohemia it stays a comedy, in the broad sense if not in the "lots of jokes" sense, until the very end.) It did do the dramatic bits well. Antigonus was well-acted (and, in an interesting bit of double-casting and an impressive bit of quick-change, played by the same actor as the old shepherd who rescued Perdita after his death). Unlike the Globe production, the adult characters aged visibly after the timeskip; like the Globe production, this didn't extend to Polixenes having the white beard that the characters mention him having. Leontes managed the difficult balancing act of being believably paranoid without losing his sense of authority and retaining enough sympathy that I wanted things to work out for him at the end. The family reunion at the end is stunningly acted and very emotionally satisfying (and features the whole family -- as Leontes, Hermione and Perdita embrace at the end, Mamilius walks in, unseen by anyone, places a hand in benediction on his father's head, and departs again hand-in-hand with the cowled figure of Time).
I'm not entirely certain whether I liked it, all things considered and taking the bad with the good, but I am entirely certain that I'm glad I watched it; it was an experience worth acquiring.
(And now that I've stopped procrastinating over that one stream, does that mean I'll start watching others again? I don't know, and I don't intend to think about it too hard in case I attract the notice of the brain weasels again. We'll just have to wait and see.)
This is the other stream of The Winter's Tale, the one from Cheek by Jowl, which means that it's now happened twice in the past year that I've seen two productions of a problem play where the first production was in a Globe-replica theatre and leaned comedic and the second production was by Cheek by Jowl and leaned dramatic/discomforting.
This one wasn't as unrelenting as the Cheek by Jowl production of Measure for Measure: it did keep some of the comedy of the Bohemian scenes, and there was a satisfying ending. It was more comfortable with the drama than with the comedy, though, I thought, and it seemed to want to make sure that we knew the comedy was limited to that one section of the play: when the action transfers from Bohemia back to Sicilia, there's a gratuitously unpleasant bit of interpolated stage business to signal that the funny bit's over and the serious bit is starting up again. (Which, actually, I disagree with in principle, even if I hadn't disliked the specific execution: I'm of the school of thought which says that part of the point of the play is that once it becomes a comedy in Bohemia it stays a comedy, in the broad sense if not in the "lots of jokes" sense, until the very end.) It did do the dramatic bits well. Antigonus was well-acted (and, in an interesting bit of double-casting and an impressive bit of quick-change, played by the same actor as the old shepherd who rescued Perdita after his death). Unlike the Globe production, the adult characters aged visibly after the timeskip; like the Globe production, this didn't extend to Polixenes having the white beard that the characters mention him having. Leontes managed the difficult balancing act of being believably paranoid without losing his sense of authority and retaining enough sympathy that I wanted things to work out for him at the end. The family reunion at the end is stunningly acted and very emotionally satisfying (and features the whole family -- as Leontes, Hermione and Perdita embrace at the end, Mamilius walks in, unseen by anyone, places a hand in benediction on his father's head, and departs again hand-in-hand with the cowled figure of Time).
I'm not entirely certain whether I liked it, all things considered and taking the bad with the good, but I am entirely certain that I'm glad I watched it; it was an experience worth acquiring.
(And now that I've stopped procrastinating over that one stream, does that mean I'll start watching others again? I don't know, and I don't intend to think about it too hard in case I attract the notice of the brain weasels again. We'll just have to wait and see.)
