FAITH LOST, AND WAKENED
This is a moody, cloudy production shot through with streaks of mad rage, deliberately unsettling. Autolycus, spirit of Time the thief and occasional narrator, roams cynically downstage in a pork pie hat, lighting a fag. Then beneath a great pale moon Leontes’ court revolves, gathering to admire the boss’s sportive wrestling-match with Polixenes. He laughingly tries to keep this childhood friend staying longer, entreats the Queen to do likewise and she obeys, courtly style. But in a stabbing moment the mist flares red (in Yael Farber’s production Tim Lutkin’s lighting plot is critical, chilling or mellowing through the story). Leontes is suddenly, savagely crazy with suspicion of his innocent wife and friend, grabbing his little son and pushing him away, ranting, spilling his horrors at us, baffling his court.
It is one of the hardest parts in Shakespeare to interpret: I never forget a truncated prisoners’ production for the old London Shakespeare Workout when in discussion afterwards one starring inmate, perhaps familiar with private destructive madness from long ago, sighed sadly “Leontes, what a plonker! It’s stuff like that…”. So every time, it falls on actor and director to work out why this king’s suspicion grows so fast, so mad and murderous. When you can’t believe it the whole strange mythic play of loss and redemption can hang oddly, unreal.
So thank goodness that Bertie Carvel – in his first RSC role since Miss Trunchbull fifteen years ago – is a marvel. He has in the interim played, among others, Donald Trump and a young Rupert Murdoch: he draws on that headlong macho determination here, but with a sadness under it, always visible, insecure. Madeline Appiah’s cheerful, confidently pregnant Hermione is more adult, safe in herself, than he can ever manage to be. She is calm, slightly baffled; he is storming, eyes glittering, attempting sophisticated mockery but gripped by the “infection of the brain that hardens the brow”. It is the howling anger of a child demanding love. Appalled, you believe him: honest Camillo is right : not being loved enough is “fear that oft infects the wisest”.
In the background the softer, easier world of Hermione’s ladies and cheeky Mamillius cannot fight such roaring male power. But downstage comes the formidable and furious Paulina (it’s a very feminist play) in the form of another marvel of energy: Aicha Kossoko. She’s a proper barnstormer. The male and female energies collide; Leontes tosses in rage under a sheet, rises, pulls on his socks, screams and curses the newborn infant, demands she be thrown on the fire, drops the red-swaddled bundle to the ground to be caught by the appalled womenfolk. The costumes are informal and period-vague, which makes the sudden formality of business-suits in the court scene all the more striking, as Hermione on trial, fresh from childbed in a slip, breasts leaking, defends herself with vain dignity. At last down comes the calm shrugging ruling from the Delphic Oracle, and for Leontes, unbearable disastrous guilt. You can hardly look at Carvel here for angry pity.
I wondered how, after the darkness of the first half, Farber would handle the pastoral revels of sixteen years on, with the lost infant Perdita grown up far beyond the sea and in love (fully entangled from the start) with her lover, Polixenes’ son Florizel. Most directors revel in this lightening of mood, as the tragedy turns into a rom-com and moves towards the final redemption of all (except poor lost Mamillius, nobody ever thinks of him). But this production swerves deliberatley away from the traditional rustic comedy (though there’s a classy pickpocket manoeuvre from Trevor Fox’s Autolycus). Farber accentuates rather the mythic, mystical side: wild Isadora-Duncan dancing to a great drumbeat round a leaping flame and orange smoke, Perdita almost a priestess. After the anger and arrogant misery of the first act this is a hippie paradise. Drawing the play’s themes hastily together, Polixenes’ rage (a mere shadow of Leontes’) sends the young couple fleeing.
I had reservations about the Bohemian interlude, though it is never dull and often spectacular. But in this play you’re always waiting, wanting to move on to the final redemptive scene around the statue. Autolycus’ hurried narrative fits that need, and at last there it is: brilliantly set, notably lit, ready for the removal of all fear and mistrust. Lanterns glimmer all around as the court gathers and Paulina – truly priestesslike – delivers the key demand: “It is required you do awake your faith”. And we do, as the playwright asks down the centuries. That’s all you can ask.
Rsc.org.uk to 30 August
Rating 4
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