The Winter’s To keep up-to-date with Cheek by Jowl, please visit cheekbyjowl.com/connect.php to join our mailing list /cheekbyjowl @CbyJ /CheekbyJowl Taleby William Shakespeare www.cheekbyjowl.com 1 2 Welcome Welcome Welcome to The Winter’s Tale. We are delighted to present this co-production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Cheek by Jowl’s latest work. Since 2005 this Our English company were last here with ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore outstanding company have been a Barbican Artistic Associate in 2014, and it’s a pleasure to be back. and thrilled a generation of audiences here and around the world with classic plays performed in English, Russian and French. We are very grateful to Toni Racklin, Leanne Cosby and the rest of the team at the Barbican for their continued support of Cheek We warmly welcome back Artistic Director Declan Donnellan who by Jowl. Without their enthusiasm and unwavering commitment was recently awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement our work would simply not be possible. and Designer Nick Ormerod. We would also like to thank our other co-producers, Les We hope you enjoy the show. Gémeaux/Sceaux/Scène Nationale, in Paris, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, Toni Racklin Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Centro Dramático Nacional, Head of Theatre, Barbican in Madrid. We are also very grateful to Arts Council England. We hope you enjoy the show. Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod 3 1 The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare The Company Emilia / Time Grace Andrews Casting Director Siobhan Bracke Cleomenes Joseph Black Costume Supervisor Angie Burns Camillo David Carr Company Manager Tim Speechley Mamillius Tom Cawte Technical Director Simon Bourne Autolycus Ryan Donaldson Technical Stage Manager Robin Turley Smith Dion / Live Music Supervisor Guy Hughes Deputy Stage Manager Harriet Stewart Leontes Orlando James Assistant Stage Manager Lou Ballard Young Shepherd Sam McArdle Sound Fred Riding Perdita Eleanor McLoughlin Lighting David Salter Old Shepherd / Antigonus Peter Moreton Wardrobe Manager Rebecca Rees Hermione / Dorcas Natalie Radmall-Quirke Paulina / Mopsa Joy Richardson Polixenes Edward Sayer With thanks to: Florizel Sam Woolf Bret Yount, Big Wig Company, Dina & Lev Dodin, Emma Woodvine, Flybynite, Gilles Charmant, James Shapiro, Jem Talbot and Simon Kennedy of East City Films, Jennifer McClinton-Temple, Jerwood Space, Johan Persson, Neil Kutner, RADA Studios, Rebecca Greenfield, Rockit Cargo, Vanessa Kennedy, Victor Vassiliev Director Declan Donnellan Designer Nick Ormerod Produced by Cheek by Jowl in a co-production with the Barbican, London; Les Gémeaux/Sceaux/Scène Nationale; Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg; Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d’Europa; Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Lighting Designer Judith Greenwood Centro Dramático Nacional, Madrid (INAEM) Music Paddy Cunneen Movement Director Jane Gibson Assistant Director Marcus Montgomery Roche Assistant Movement Director Elizabeth Ballinger 5 6 Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy – in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land 7 Orlando James and Natalie Radmall-Quirke 8 Affection! Thy intention stabs the centre. All of which is to say that The Winter’s Tale is a The Winter’s Tale Thou doest make possible things not so held, play that resists glib summary or even simple Communicat’st with dream (how can this be?), description. This was true even in by James Shapiro With what unread thou co-active art, Shakespeare’s day, if the report of Simon And fellow’st nothing. Then ’tis credent Forman, astrologer and diarist, is representative. Thou mayst co-join with something, and thou dost Forman saw the play at the Globe Theatre in The years 1610-11 witnessed Shakespeare’s play, Shakespeare sends him packing, (And that beyond commission), and I find it, May 1611 and jotted down the following: last great solo creative burst (his plays after this pursued by a wild beast. If the situation And that to the infection of my brains ‘observe there how Leontes the King of Sicilia would all be written collaboratively). In the demanded it, he can even bring, or seem to And hard’ning of my brows. was overcome with jealousy of his wife with the course of this remarkable period he wrote three bring, the dead back to life. And if his story King of Bohemia his friend…’ ‘Remember also plays – Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The demanded that a land-locked country have These lines, with their fits and starts, self- how he sent to the oracle of Apollo, and the Tempest – markedly different from the thirty or a coastline, that too was easily arranged. questioning, and parenthetical asides, feel answer of Apollo, that she was guiltless and so comedies, histories, and tragedies that It was the sort of thing that drove Ben as fractured as the disturbed mind of preceded them. Their order of composition is Jonson, a champion of verisimilitude, to Leontes himself, who speaks them. We can unclear, and for all we know The Winter’s Tale distraction. Years after The Winter’s Tale was only imagine what the actor who was first may well have been Shakespeare’s last first staged Jonson was still fuming that handed this role must have felt. As late as solo-authored play. These works – often referred ‘Shakespeare in a play, brought in a number 1603, when Shakespeare was still regularly to collectively as ‘Romances’ – turn, almost of men saying they had suffered shipwreck rehearsing and acting alongside his fellow- obsessively, on a recurrent set of concerns: in Bohemia, where there is no sea near by players, he would have been around to jealousy, grief, surveillance, distrust, some hundred miles.’ explain what needed explaining. But by the reconciliation, loss, and second chances. time he was writing The Winter’s Tale, he was Shakespeare’s highly experimental no longer spending long days in the In wrestling with these issues in The Winter’s technique extends to the play’s language, company of his fellow-players. It’s hard not to Tale, Shakespeare found himself dispensing even if that meant that on occasion an conclude that he was writing what he wanted with the realism that had defined much of actor’s words could barely be understood. to write, and leaving it to the players to deal his earlier writing. If he had to skip sixteen So that, for example, it’s as if intelligibility with it as best they could. Happily, the years, Shakespeare was content to bring itself, let alone the familiar rhythm of iambic greatest directors and actors have always an actor onstage – and call him ‘Time’ – pentameter, gets strained to the breaking found this speech, and others like it, to tell us as much. If a character had to be point when Shakespeare tries to capture extraordinary. violently removed from the action of the the workings of a mind tortured by jealousy: 9 Ryan Donaldson and company 10 that the King was jealous, etc.’ ‘Remember those venues was the Jacobean court, where also the Rogue that came in all tattered…and the play, staged there on at least five occasions, how he feigned him sick and to have been was a hit. The other and more significant venue robbed of all that he had, and how he cozened was Blackfriars Theatre, a small indoor stage the poor man of all his money.’ After a good in the heart of London. After 1609 or so deal more of this, Forman sums things up: Shakespeare’s company performed there ‘Beware of trusting feigned beggars or fawning annually during the winter months, returning to fellows.’ the Globe in the summer. The Winter’s Tale, with its often dense and understated dialogue, its Is this all that he took away from the intense opening and closing scenes, its reliance performance? Vapid plot-summary and a moral at its climax on music, and its mysteriousness one might find in a fortune-cookie? What’s so – all staged in flickering candlelight – feels like infuriating about Forman’s account – especially a play written with the potential of an intimate because it’s the only contemporary one of the Blackfriars performance very much in play to survive – is how poorly it does justice to Shakespeare’s mind. so remarkable a work of art. But Forman is not to blame if the play disintegrates when A challenging work for even the most talented reduced to plot summary. For how can anyone of contemporary directors and actors, The begin to account for those small moments that Winter’s Tale seems very much a play for our collectively define the play’s haunting own day, not least of all because of what it has brilliance? The ghostly presence of the dead. to say about terrible misjudgements and The small but inescapable frictions that define longed-for second chances, however family life. The sexual fixation of a jealous mind. unrealistic they may seem to be. The awakening of faith. The refusal to be silenced. The pathos of offstage deaths. James Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including 1599: A Year Forman saw the play outdoors, at the Globe. But in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005) and Shakespeare was also writing it with two other Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the likely venues in mind, which may help explain Revolution until Now (2014). His most recent book is 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of what feels so different about the play.