Canadian Stage’s Dream in High
Park, an annual performance of a
Shakespearean play which takes
place in the High Park Amphitheatre,
channels all the fairytale
playfulness and mystical fancy of
its surroundings. The plays exhibit
an extraordinary tendency toward
lightness. Appealing to families,
the company often downplays tragedy
in favour of wit or bawdy humour.
In some ways, this habit of
niceness conjures up a tremendous
feeling of gaiety. It can, however, be
reductive: it fails to recognize the
particularity of sorrow and, in failing
to differentiate heartache from
heartache, it misses the potential
of Shakespeare’s plays to truly
wound, as John Berryman would
say.
This is not true of 2011’s production,
The Winter’s Tale. Directed by
Emily Shook and casted impeccably,
this installment of the Dream
has a Dionysian tautness and spirit
that belies a severe underpinning:
it is fun, yes — but shocking.
The Winter’s Tale is a loping, twisting
story, first of a king who drives
apart his friends and destroys his
family through jealously, and then
of the bramble of circumstances
sixteen years later that reunite him
with his abandoned daughter.
The cast hurtles through the
winding plot with remarkable force.
The first thrust is supplied by David
Jansen as Leontes, who captures a
sympathetic hero unwinding with
authority. Long before a word is
shared that trouble looms in the
distance, Leontes’ voice quakes
with uncertainty and frustration
— he shifts with ease from affability
to inner turmoil. Equally notable
performances come from the backing
cast, namely John Blackwood
as Antigonus, and Nicole Robert as
Paulina.
Estelle Shook’s vision of The
Winter’s Tale is sparse. Props are
scarce, lest they detract from the
looming stage. The few that do appear
are icons and are often reused
(as are the actors). In this way,
they become points of reference to
things within and beyond the play.
Shook shifts attention from visual
pageantry to the auditory: music
and sounds are shaped by a small
ensemble of musicians, sometimes
seen, sometimes not. The ultimate
effect is an emphasis on the “beyond-
being-seen,” the extrasensory,
the magical.
Shook’s The Winter’s Tale so effectively
sparks the audience’s
imagination that it ultimately creates
a space into which the dimensional
world of each character
can open. Thus, in the Tale’s final
spectacle of fantasy, when a statue
of dead Hermione comes to life, we
awe not at the possibility of magic
itself, but rather at the vast depth
of wonderment created by the
characters.
