O 'Winter,' Where Is Thy Sting?

No soliloquies have been harmed in the making of Folger Theatre's new staging of "The Winter's Tale," but no deep reservoir of poignancy has been stirred, either. The production, directed by Blake Robison, head of Bethesda's Round House Theatre, is a fairly textbook, modern-dress version of one of Shakespeare's trickiest plays, a tall tale of paranoia and vindictiveness, forgiveness and remorse.

The payoff for your forbearance toward the intricate, protracted mechanics of "The Winter's Tale" must come in spades in the evening's final scene, during which a miracle contrived by dark arts redeems an arrogant king's ghastly errors. Although I'd like to report that the requisite tears are wrung, the reality is that the effect is muted. The emotional well on this occasion is rather shallow.

Washington audiences are lucky in the amount of high-caliber Shakespeare at their disposal. I don't know of another major American city that supports two competing companies devoted chiefly to the canon. A byproduct of the immersion, however, is the development of ever-escalating expectations for what these troupes put on the stage. In such a vigorous environment, adequate Shakespeare doesn't quite cut it.

Granted, "The Winter's Tale" is a bear. (You might recall that one of its more hapless characters is eaten by one.) Tonally, the work swerves radically, setting off the tragedy of a "jealous tyrant," Leontes (Daniel Stewart), who condemns his stalwart queen, Hermione (Connan Morrissey), to prison on his ludicrous suspicion that she's having an affair with the visiting king of Bohemia, Polixenes (David Whelan).

Leontes's inexplicable accusations destroy his family and send the court of Sicilia into bottomless grief. But with an abrupt shift, 16 years later, to bucolic Bohemia, the sadder tidings of "The Winter's Tale" begin to recede. One likes to think that perhaps Shakespeare could not abide at this moment another descent into vengeance-fueled death -- and as a result, concocts a denouement so unlikely that even some of his own characters profess not to believe it.

Directors and actors have long struggled with the story; the best treatments discover lyrical oratory in the penance of Leontes and his reunion with his queen. In Robison's production, unfortunately, Leontes does not seem to undergo any kind of metamorphosis. There is little evidence in the imposing Stewart's countenance at play's end of all the king has endured -- and learned -- in the penitential years between Hermione's loss and return. Morrissey, too, has some issues, although hers concern the vocal demands of a classical role.

For this version, Robison reinforces the idea of the work as a bedtime story. He's invented a mini-prologue, in which a young boy (the sweet Zophia Pryzby) asks his father (Lawrence Redmond) to read to him. "A sad tale's best for winter," the child says, echoing a line normally spoken a bit later in the play, by Mamillius, the doomed son of Leontes. That Zophia also portrays Mamillius, and Redmond plays Antigonus -- the old man ordered by Leontes to dispose of his new-born child, Perdita, because of his unfounded suspicions about Hermione's constancy -- blankets the role-doubling in a fine extra layer of a protector's warmth.

The director develops the concept by having the boy and father reappear before the scene in which Shakespeare has Antigonus "exit, pursued by a bear." In this case, the predator is a stuffed toy, a nice touch. But the device at this point feels imposed on the play, rather than as if it had evolved naturally out of the directorial framework.

The bifurcated world of "The Winter's Tale" often inspires set designers; here, James Kronzer evokes the two locales as simple storybook backdrops. Sicilia is a black, brooding landscape, dotted with what look like crushed snowflakes. To make a shift to carefree Bohemia, panels affixed to the stage's permanent columns unfold to reveal clouds, and a field of sunflowers materializes behind a see-through wall. The costumes (by Kate Turner-Walker) for the Sicilians are funereal; the wardrobe for the Bohemians is loudly floral, as if the countryside were overrun by hippies.

Several actors deliver capably. Perdita and Florizel, the young lovers of royal lineage who bill and coo in Bohemia, are portrayed with buoyant appeal by Laura C. Harris and Dan Crane. Naomi Jacobson is especially well cast as Paulina, the mother hen of the Sicilian court, who satisfyingly unleashes her wrath on the all-too-deserving Leontes. The actor Frank X fills the contours of Leontes's aide Camillo keenly, and Whalen makes for a sturdy Polixenes.

The production, though, does not fully feed on the play's pivotal power source: Leontes's wrenching victimization of Hermione. In that peculiar, consoling Shakespearean climax, when Paulina commands Hermione to descend from her memorial pedestal and melt back into flesh, we, alas, don't melt along with her.

The Winter's Tale, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Blake Robison. Lighting, Kenton Yeager; sound and original music, Matthew M. Nielson; choreography, Karma Camp. With Anthony Cochrane, Drew Eshelman, Jon Reynolds, Jesse Terrill, Saskia de Vries, Kirsten Benjamin. About three hours. Through March 8 at Folger Theatre, 201 E. Capitol St. SE. Visit http://www.folger.edu/theatre or call 202-544-7077.