The primary part rips your middle out. The second one makes an attempt, tenderly, to place it again once more. That is The Iciness’s Story, these days being carried out at The Tobacco Manufacturing unit, Bristol.
In Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, King Leontes of Sicilia, in a have compatibility of jealous paranoia, falsely accuses his spouse Queen Hermione of adultery with their good friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia. Quickfire disaster unfolds.
Sooner than you understand it, the couple’s new child daughter, Perdita, has been deserted on a Bohemian hillside, left to the mercy of wolves and ravens. 16 years later, raised through the mercy of Bohemian shepherds as an alternative, Perdita falls in love with Polixenes’ son. There are disguises. There are japes. And, astonishingly, there’s reconciliation.
It’s a marvellous manufacturing, directed through Heidi Vaughan, and it marks a welcome go back of Shakespeare to The Tobacco Manufacturing unit after a hiatus. With a solid drawn from Bristol’s deep ability pool, the connections on level really feel safe, lively, and richly nuanced.
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Hermione and Paulina are two of Shakespeare’s maximum intriguing roles for ladies, and Alice Barclay and Rose Wardlow do them justice. Barclay is shocking because the shocked Hermione, whilst Wardlow brings layers of vulnerability and sarkiness to Paulina’s righteous fury. Lots of the smaller and medium roles shine. Amy Loughton (Perdita’s shepherdess mum) and Invoice Ward (Polixenes) to find natural situational comedy in moments that would simply had been simply useful.
King Leontes’ tyranny, which dominates the primary part, is performed through Felix Hayes as one of those psychotic episode. I’m torn. Hayes has a powerful level presence, with a whiplash transfer from mild loveliness to shuffling, brooding, whimpering monstrosity.
It’s a spellbinding breakdown. However I used to be left questioning – may a much less unhinged portrayal have higher uncovered the complicity of the courtroom?
The dress and set design additionally really feel slightly elusive. This ambiguity way the character of Leontes’ authority is difficult to pin down, as is the misogyny that shapes his tyranny. With androgynous-suited courtiers and comfortable furniture, it’s laborious to pin down the time or position, except it’s the comfortable play space at Wacky Warehouse.
The selection turns out planned, leaning into that undying fairytale high quality. However The Iciness’s Story is in particular about time, together with a specific time – now.
The forged of The Iciness’s Story on level.
Jamie Rees
What The Iciness’s Story can let us know in 2025
The play celebrates the therapeutic energy of time, nature and the flip of the seasons. However the seasons themselves aren’t proof against tyranny. In different phrases, The Iciness’s Story is ready responses to tyranny, in addition to tyranny itself.
Paulina (Wardlow) makes an attempt to bloody smartly type it out. She immediately confronts each Leontes (“this most cruel usage of your queen, / not able to produce more accusation / than your own weak-hing’d fancy, something savours / of tyranny”) and the cowardly courtroom (“like you, /
that creep like shadows through him, and do sigh / at every his useless heavings”).
However how concerning the others? Camillo (Dorian Simpson) pragmatically scurries for the hills to bide his time. Cleomenes (Amy Loughton) musters some flustered bravery. Antigonus (Stu McLoughlin), let’s be frank, merits to be eaten through a undergo. It’s fortunate there’s one to hand.
Genevieve Saberwal as Perdita and Jacob Aldcroft as Florizel.
Jamie Rees
The Iciness’s Story can also be tough to level within the spherical. It’s a tale stuffed with centripetal forces – characters beg, vow, convenience, grasp, smother – but the gap encourages simply the other: centrifugal forces, outward movement, striding away, lobbing repartee over a shoulder, performers unfolding like a clockwork mechanism. The spherical staging comes into its personal, on the other hand, in stunning scenes of revelry, music, and dance, which might be additionally scenes of therapeutic.
Somebody as soon as instructed me that boredom is the most important a part of therapeutic. The long pastoral scenes of the First Folio Iciness’s Story appear to undergo that out. However for this manufacturing, Robin Belfield has given the script a decent edit, shortening many of those scenes.
In the end, I’m thankful for the considered cuts – other people do, in spite of everything, wish to go away the theatre ultimately, and the 2 halves really feel similarly balanced.
The Iciness’s Story proposes that actual therapeutic comes from regret, time, and distance. It additionally comes from the corporate of the ones much less wrapped up within the trauma. Your wounds will outline you till you discover ways to relinquish the lead function to your personal tragedy, and settle for a supporting function in any individual else’s comedy.
By means of the tip of the play, Leontes feels regret – however is it sufficient to offer therapeutic for the ones he has harm? Or is one thing extra lacking – some extra specific reckoning or reparative justice? I don’t know. The Iciness’s Story received’t unravel the query of whether or not therapeutic is ever in point of fact whole. It best asks whether or not we’re keen to reside with the burden of what can’t be undone.
