Shakespeare Bulletin

[End Page 141]

Tommer Peterson's initial set for SSC's The Winter's Talewas wonderfully inviting. In the darkened theater, a small table stood stage left on which rested an hour glass, lit softly from above to create a sense of interior warmth on a winter night. Amid three pillars of different heights standing stage right, center, and left, all embroidered with heavy brocaded cloth of paisley and floral designs, the actors gradually emerged to take their places for the opening scene accompanied by gentle guitar sounds. As more lights came on to reveal chairs and small pedestals around the stage, the scene evoked a pleasant evening in a wealthy contemporary kingdom.

Director Sheila Daniels created surprising ambiguity about the familial and sexual relationships among the play's major characters. In 1.2 Polixenes initially stood quite close to Hermione, who wore a lovely, rather loose-fitting blue gown. As if to reinforce his request that Polixenes extend his stay, Leontes placed a necklace around his neck, after which they embraced. When Polixenes again refused to stay, and Leontes invited Hermione to persuade him, Mamillius went to Polixenes's side, as if perhaps also trying to persuade him to stay but also suggesting, at least obliquely, an improvised family reunion. The production thus raised visually—for both Leontes and spectators—the question of Mamillius's paternity. Hermione was quite affectionate during her persuasion of Polixenes, and from the moment that she announced that he would stay, Leontes's jealousy was upon him. As regularly happens in productions of the play, the other characters froze in place during Leontes's soliloquies, which Darragh Kennan delivered directly to spectators and which quickly reached a feverish pitch. By 1.2.295, Camillo's "Good my lord, be cured / Of this diseased opinion, and betimes, / For 'tis most dangerous," Leontes's fit was full blown, and from here through to the end of the trial scene and the revelation of first Mamillius's and then Hermione's deaths Kennan played Leontes as a man so driven by jealousy and anger...