Season 61 Begins in Wintry Mix
With the opening of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, our 61st season is off and running!
Shakespeare is a high risk/high reward programming choice. In my personal experience, you usually know within 30 seconds of the show starting whether you’re in good hands or bad hands. And 90% of the time, it’s bad hands.
But whenever you hit on the other 10%, you understand why we continue to produce the playwright laureate of the English language. For a moment, it’s like listening to a babbling toddler. You get every fifth word or so, and the more you concentrate, the less you grasp. But once you take a breath and relax into a language that is at once familiar and strange, you begin to get it. And then, within heartbeats, you’re riveted.
The Shepherd Shakespeare Company, whose mission is to make Shakespeare accessible and available to all, exists within the elite 10%. Their Winter’s Tale at Armour Street Theatre, which features regulars from both of our organizations as well as newbies, is an exquisite accomplishment of expression and feeling. When you see this first show of our season, trust that you are in good hands.
The Winter’s Tale also exemplifies late-career weirdness from The Bard. There are time jumps, tonal shifts, sprawling digressions, and moments of devil-may-care whimsy. There’s also, as is typical toward the end of the line for the world’s greatest artists, incredible soul. Sometimes, when you have nothing left to prove, you can be your most honest self, and I imagine Shakespeare was in that zone when he wrote this strange and haunting piece.
We live in an inarticulate time, and that can make Shakespeare feel even more pompously well-worded. But when you get past the initial intimidation of the Elizabethan tongue, you lock into an eternal human story with eternal human dynamics: we are all trying, and failing, and trying again to say and do the right thing.
Check out some more thoughts on The Winter’s Tale and Season 61 with Steve’s appearances on WSIC and Positively Charlotte!