Here in New Zealand (which they visited on their way to Singapore, Germany, Spain and England) they had to negotiate the difficult space (sound-wise) of the Aotea Centre, which some (the Britsh members of the cast, to be perfectly honest) did more successfully than others. I would have preferred to see both plays ina a smaller, more contained theatre, such as the Old Vic.
I had a few doubts about their take on The Cherry Orchard. Of course, the cast was excellent, especially Simon Russell Beale who interpreted Lopakhin with cringe-inducing social awkwardness, but also with a subtly repressed desire for acceptance and revenge, one that made his big scene in Act 2 - where he reveals he has bought the orchard - one of the most heart-stopping moments of theatre I've ever seen.
His elation for finally owning the property his slave father and grandfather were never allowed to step in is gorgeous: he tilts one by one all the chairs in the room, rages at Ranevskaya for not having listened to him, to his advice to save the property, but at the same time can't hide his internal gloating. If he cannot be accepted by the aristocrats he admires and lends money to, if he cannot be loved by Ranevskaya, he will, at the very least, enjoy the wealth they've wasted and become even richer out of their foolishness.
But there is something about Sam Mendes' staging, such a perfect stylisation of movement and characterisation, in his use of the set, of the lights that cast long shadows (making people look like trees, a human orchard that is about to be "cut" by the passing of time and history), the intervention of chilling, ominous music, that failed to touch me on an emotional level.
I've seen much less sophisticated versions of Chekhov's final play, less visionary productions, less polished and professional, perhaps, but that have touched me more deeply. This one, however, resonates as a warning for the present and we, the audience, are encouraged to identify with Ranevskaya and her silly brother Gaev, the ruling class aware of their inevitable demise, yet unable and most of all unwilling to adapt to the changing times, the rise of the new classes and the needs of an even poorer, more enraged class on their heels: bewildered and too enamoured with the memory of past summers in our orchard to accept that it doesn't belong to us anymore, that it never did.
With The Winter's Tale, instead, Mendes and the company achieve exactly the opposite result. Shakespeare's final play is a difficult one for a contemporary audience who likes unified style, clear-cut protagonists, over-arching themes, unity of time and perhaps defined morality. It is, in other word, a play that defies all kinds of emotional identification and easy moralism.
Mendes embraces all these challanges and the cast rises to the challenge with him, collectively. I honestly have never seen such a large cast work so beautifully together in even the "smallest" of roles. The first half is tragedy, dominated by an extraordinary Simon Russell Beale's King Leontes of Sicilia who, in his paranoid jelousy, causes the end of his friendship with King Polyxenes of Bohemia, the death of his own son Mamillius, that of his wife Hermiones and the abandonment/loss of their daughter Perdita.
Paulina, whose husband Antigonus also dies as a consequence of Leontes' madness, is the only one who truly stands up to him, who calls him tyrant and who eventually forces him to face his guilt through 16 years of penance and grief, both a support and a reminder of his folly. Sinead Cusack is wonderful in this role, much more convincing than her constantly bewildered Ranevskaya, in my opnion.
If the first half is darkness and tragedy, a perennial winter lit only by candles that are blown off one by one after Hermione's death, the second half, 16 years later, is youth, light, music in another land that looks very much like the American Western prairie: it's romance and comedy. It's spring.
As I said, all the cast is amazing, with Richard Easton as Time and the shepard who adopts Perdita, and Tobias Segal as his son, providing a truly funny counterpart to the tragic interactions of the first half. But to be honest, Ethan Hawke as the thief Autolycus steals the show. I was surprised, because I found his Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard adequate but underwhelming, in fact a little too neurotic; too - how can I say it - American for Chekhov's play.
But as Autolycus he shines: he has the opportunity to sing, move with the physicality of a confident rogue, sexy and cynical, funny and annoying, yet fundamentally "good", whether he likes it or not, even without final redemption.
Redemption comes for Leontes in the final act, the one that brings the American Arcadia in contact with the Old-World tragedy: below the surface, the two worlds are not too dissimilar, because also Polyxenes proves to be a tyrant, one who won't allow his son Florizel to marry beneath his social class. Of course, we know that Florizel is in fact in love with Perdita and that through appropriate revelations the order of things will be restored, but Leontes decides to plead the cause of Florizel and Perdita before he knows she is his long-lost daughter, having learnt through grief the lesson that Paulina was trying to teach him: don't be a tyrant, listen to the truth, be tolerant. Forgive.
Only once the two tyrants have learnt their lesson the final miracle can unravel and the statue of dead Hermione comes to life. Is it Paulina's magic that brings the queen back to life, or is it finally Hermione (whose death we only heard through Paulina's own words) who has decided that her husband has now grieved enough? I like to think the latter, of course, and imagine 16 years of Hermione and Paulina living secretly together, loving each other while measuring the penance for Leontes, until they decide he can be forgiven when Perdita reappears: the power of maternal love.
But it doesn't matter, really. What matters is that time has healed old wounds, winter is over, what was lost has finally been found (Mamillius and Perdita are interpreted by the same actress, in a clever twist on the tradition that sees Hermione and Perdita often played by the same person) and tyrants have become good fathers, husbands, kings.
