Look, what is done cannot be now amended

You know how when you experience something that is so very good and enjoyable, you want to experience it again? There's this scene in C S Lewis's Perelandra, where Prof Ransom (or maybe he isn't a professor; it's been years since I read it) goes to the planet Venus and finds and eats this delicious fruit and it's so yummy he wants to have another, but this green lady says "Hey, you had one and it was good. Let that suffice and don't be a pig." And Ransom sees her point, I think. But if you're not full, why shouldn't you have another one? What's the point of putting See's Candy in a box if you can't eat the whole box?

I'm not sure if that's an apt analogy, but my point is that, having seen two brilliant adaptations of The Winter's Tale (and two disappointing ones), I was pretty excited to have an opportunity to see another during the 2005 Shakespeare festival at the Old Globe Theatres, especially since the director was a Famous Director with Many Critically Acclaimed Productions to his credit.

You know how when you're eating a bunch of See's Candy, and you think "I'll just have one more to finish off this session" and you pick one that looks like maybe it's got coconut cream in it and instead it's a cherry cordial and you almost gag and wish you had left well enough alone?

The Winter's Tale is a play about jealousy, loss, love, repentance, forgiveness, and restoration. These are profound themes, and the play requires a profound treatment if it is to be worth attending. I'm sorry to say that the only sense of loss I felt at the Old Globe production was that of an opportunity to see something done right, and the only incident of jealousy I noticed was my own as I sat there wishing I had been the director instead.

I think it says something about a production of The Winter's Tale when Perdita is the most affecting character. And the funniest. And the one who shows the most depth of feeling. Oh, I take it back. Paulina was good. Very good. Hers was actually the best performance of the evening, but Perdita was cuter and she got to do a cool dance. Oh yeah, and Hermione had a moment in 2.1, as she knelt with her hands on the floor after Leontes had thrown her aside with his "Away with her, to prison!" She knelt there, and she knelt there, and there was a long silence, a very long silence, as she apparently tried to make sense of what was happening to her marriage, her husband, her very very life. It stretched on, until finally she uttered with a mixture of confusion and resignation, "There's some ill planet reigns." I admired the bravery of the long silence, and appreciated the acting therein. It was the best moment for Hermione. It should have been one in a series of excellent Hermione moments: the fond teasing of her husband, her affectionate interchange with Mamillius, the heart-wrenching dignity and misery at her trial for treason, and - it should go without saying but I'll say it anyway - her return to 'life'. The statue scene in 5.3 is usually the most moving event in the play, and when it comes off bland and mechanical, as it did in this production, it is a dramatic failure.

I believe the problem - not just in the statue scene, but throughout most of the Sicilia scenes - was a combination of inadequate acting and uninspired blocking. It was like the director, perhaps because he was busy with the other play he directed during this repertory season, didn't care enough about this play to give it what it needed. Instead he played it safe. That's what this production was: a safe, automatic offering of Shakespeare. The audience need not worry about having any demands made on them. Give them a few laughs (and one of those 'laffs' was so nonsensically cheap that if booing had been socially permissible, I would have thought about booing. Wait, I did think about booing) and a few 'wow' effects and they'll be entertained. Hmph.

What I liked:

- As I said, Perdita was funny. It's the first time I've ever seen a funny Perdita, not just someone "making pretty". When she was passing out the flowers to everyone, it was a hoot as she made her comments on the flowers applicable to the recipients. To Mopsa (or was it Dorcas?), "Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares" (okay, that's not funny, but it's leading up to it); to her brother, the Clown, "Violets - dim (pause), but sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes", etc. To Dorcas (or was it Mopsa?), "Pale primroses, that die unmarried . . ." and the look on Dorpsa's face.

- Paulina was very good, as I said. The actress playing her, Kandis Chappell, sounded like she knew what she was doing and wasn't just generalizing emotions. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Leontes, Hermione, and Polixenes, in varying degrees. Leontes is, I think, a very difficult character to play, and this guy wasn't up to it, at least not on the night I saw it. The actor playing Polixenes did a little better.

- Those brave silences I mentioned. Actually, I mentioned only one. There were two of them, and I wish I could remember when the other one was. I'm pretty sure it was during the trial scene.

- The lightning and thunder when Leontes denies the oracle, and later when Antigonus prepares to leave the baby on Bohemia's shore. (And I couldn't believe the number of people I overheard during the interval who laughingly commented on "Bohemia's shore". Okay, I only overheard two people comment on it, but that's two more than I've ever heard comment on it before, and I've seen the play five times now. These guys sounded like it was a new idea to them, realizing Shakespeare didn't know his Bohemian geography; or were they just trying to appear erudite?) Anyway, the lightning and thunder were cool special effects. Very nicely done.

-The Old Shepherd. I've liked Jonathan McMurtry in just about every role I've seen him in at the Old Globe (Verges in 1995's Much Ado about Nothing and the Porter in this year's Macbeth come immediately to mind).

- It was nice to see an Antigonus and Paulina who really looked like they were married. Some nice touches there, and Antigonus had just the right touch of gently sardonic wit.

- The dance in 4.4. It was a fun, rollicking country dance, with nobody confusing vulgarity with humor.

- Camillo's and Polixenes' disguises in 4.4: Polixenes was a bearded, one-eyed (with an eye patch) military leader in full regalia (including a plumed hat with bright red plumes at least 18 inches tall and a chestful of medals) confined to a wheelchair, and Camillo was a nun (with a winged cap like the Flying Nun) in sunglasses who pushed the wheelchair.

Polixenes and the Old Shepherd talk about the sheep-shearing festivities

- I liked how Leontes got the idea to kill Polixenes. When Leontes confronts Camillo in 1.2 with Hermione's supposed adultery, Camillo enters with a champagne glass, which he sets down on the edge of the stage during the ensuing dialogue. Later, Leontes brings Camillo to the floor in his rage and, seeing the glass nearby, suddenly gets the idea of getting rid of Polixenes with a poisoned drink, that was nicely done.

- When Antigonus was describing his dream of Hermione, Hermione herself came on at an upper level and delivered the dream lines herself. I've always thought it should be done like that, and this was the first time I'd seen it that way.

What I didn't like:

- The cutting of so many lines. Okay, I don't mind when they cut Polixenes and Camillo's lines in 1.2, as long as it's not too much. I can understand why they cut Cleomenes and Dion in 3.1, although I don't agree with it. And I can even take a little - a very little - cutting of Hermione's lines, although it bothers me, because she's not in the play that much as it is. (For instance, they cut most of her "cram's with praise" lines, which made me sad, but I'm happy to report that they left her speeches in the trial scene intact. If only she had delivered them like she meant what she was saying. Sigh.) But . . . they cut the whole beginning of 2.1 where the ladies tease Mamillius about blue eyebrows and noses. I've been thinking about that, and maybe it's because the kid playing Mamillius just wasn't that good. But if they were cutting lines based on how good the acting was, the play would've lasted about 45 minutes total. No, I'm kidding. An hour, maybe. And I'm not a true fan of the character of Autolycus, like most people seem to be, but even I was shocked at some of the cutting done to his part. His trio with Dorcas and Mopsa, gone. And I like the bit where he pretends to be a nobleman and talks of fardels and threatens the Old Shepherd and the Clown. Gone. And in 5.2 when the Shepherd and the Clown tell Autolycus to mend his life, gone. All gone. There were some other cuts here and there that I noticed at t the time, but can't think of now. They didn't bother me as much, I guess, or I would have remembered them.

- Autolycus threw away his line about "toads carbonadoed".

- Leontes was standing right there, listening and smiling, when Hermione got Polixenes to agree to stay a few more days, yet a moment later he comes up to them and says "Is he won yet?" Was he only pretending to listen earlier? Bad blocking, I call it.

- Hermione is supposed to be 8 or 9 months pregnant, right? Yet there she was tripping all about the stage (tripping like walking quickly and lightly and gracefully, not tripping like being a clumsy fool), sitting down and getting up without a burden in the world (once she even sat on the stairs, with her knees higher than her bottom - just lowered herself as easily as you please with no helping hand and got up under her own power, too), bending over frontwards (you just don't do that so casually when you're that heavy, because you might just fall over), and at one point she actually half-twirled to face someone. I think in the real word the weight of one's abdomen would act with some sort of centrifugal force, initiating a movement that would require considerable effort to bring to a stop and possible giving the unborn baby what my son calls 'g-face'.

- The bear. This was a large (oh, say, 7 feet tall by 10 or 12 feet wide) flat cut-out of a polar (?) bear's head, with a gaping mouth like the entrance to a cave. The actress presenting Time pulled it out from its hiding place behind one of the walls, and Antigonus back up the stairs and through the mouth. Then he sat there, framed by sharp teeth, and said, "I am gone forever." It was such a jarring change from the relative realism of the play up to that point to an expressionistic representation of being eaten by a bear that it was funny. I know that most of the time some audience members will laugh at the bear part, no matter how it's presented, maybe because it's so unexpected or shocking, and especially when the bear is played by an actor in a bear costume. As I sat there trying not to guffaw at this large board bear head, I asked myself if the director had thought, "Well, they're going to laugh anyway, so I might as well give 'em a darn good reason to laugh."

- Most of the acting. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good enough. It was perfunctory, functional with no emotional depth, and once in a while it was so 'off' that it was embarrassing. Examples of this last from the statue scene: Leontes' "Oh, she's warm" was operatic in quality instead of awed. Same with Hermione's "You gods, look down, and from your sacred vials pour your blah blah blah" and so on. Yeah, right, I really believe you.

- Speaking of the statue scene, I didn't like the 'statue': Hermione sitting with her upper body sprawled over Time's knees. Okay, I've seen real statues like that. There was this one life-sized statue of an angel sprawled in exactly the same manner over a tombstone in this cemetery in Costa Rica I used to walk through every Sunday on my way to and from church, and that's immediately what I thought of when I saw Hermione last night, but it just looked so . . . so sprawly. and that brings up another thing that bothered me: Time sat looking out over all the doings during the entire play. The entire play! What was Time doing there, anyhow. Hasn't she got better ways to spend her . . . time? I thought it was weird. Anyway, so when Hermione "woke up" it was totally unremarkable and unsurprising and uninspiring. Then she came down the stairs, by which time Leontes had collapsed to his knees in an unremarkably and unsurprisingly uninspired manner, and she went to him and bent over slightly (she bent over way farther when she was nine months pregnant) and draped her arms sort of on/around him. Of course, this makes utter nonsense of Camillo's line "She hangs about his neck!" so of course he didn't say it. But there was no heartfelt embrace. On the other hand, there was nothing tentative about the touch either. It was hard to tell if Hermione had forgiven Leontes and now accepted him again or if she still had reservations. There was just nothing there. Bland. Mechanical. A dramatic failure.