The Winter’s Tale

Branagh’s sold-out production of Shakespeare’s story of romantic salvation fizzes with exceptional performances
Georgina-Brown-colour-176Readers of The Lady will not be surprised that there was a box-office stampede for tickets to The Winter’s Tale, the first production in Sir Kenneth Branagh’s opening season at the Garrick. Sharp-elbowed readers were doubtless first in the queue. But the draw was not Branagh, splendid Shakespearean though he is, but an even greater classical actor and national treasure, Dame Judi Dench.

Dame Judi has been gracing the stage for 58 years. She will be 81 on 9 December. Many happy returns, your Dameship! When she was cast away on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs she claimed her performances are generated by fear. ‘It’s like petrol,’ she said, adding that acting gets more frightening the longer she does it because more is expected of her.

Macular degeneration means she can no longer read. Otherwise, age has not withered her, nor custom staled her infinite dramatic variety. Her everpresent luminosity shines even brighter on stage. Her part as Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, a miraculous tale of redemption and regeneration, is not the lead and yet she almost makes it so in Branagh and Rob Ashford’s sublime, beautifully spoken revival. She is much more than a star turn. She becomes the character on which the plot pivots, the voice of humanity, sanity, practicality, reason, a constant reminder to Leontes that his life must be a ‘perpetual’ penance for his murderous suspicion of his innocent wife Hermione, and also the deliverer of his salvation.

The show opens on designer Christopher Oram’s plush Victorian, Christmas-card perfect scene, with carollers and snow, a towering tree, and a boy urging a grandmotherly figure, Paulina, to tell a wintry tale. The family gathers to watch an old cine film of princes Leontes and Polixenes, best friends from babyhood, through boyhood and halfway through manhood. Until this moment, when Leontes suddenly decides his wife Hermione (gracious, dignified Miranda Raison) and Polixenes are lovers.

The Winter’s Tale is Othello with a happy ending. Branagh brings tremendous intensity to his Leontes, erupting into wild-eyed jealousy and, later, into savage howling grief.

There are lovely performances too from Jessie Buckley – a glowing shepherdess Perdita – and Tom Bateman as hunky Prince Florizel. Snowy-haired Michael Pennington pulls off Shakespeare’s trickiest stage direction – exit, pursued by a bear – with terrific aplomb. I recently learnt that ‘dench’ is street slang for ultra-cool. Well, this exceptional production is one hundred and ten per cent dench.

The Winter’s Tale will be broadcast live at cinemas nationwide on 26 November.