I went to see The Winter’s Tale today at the River City Shakespeare Festival. My previous experience with this work was The Winter’s Tale Project, which was a lovely musical. (The fact that it was a musical and that I liked it should speak volumes.) That performance had good tunes and poked fun at itself.
And it had sexy sheep.
Now this performance left a bad taste in my mouth. The main reason people go to see The Winter’s Tale is because of the “Exit, pursued by bear” stage direction.
They go to see the bear!
This performance had no bear. Not even a hint of a bear. Instead some women in white danced around to, I don’t know, metaphorically represent the bear? It was wrong, and I can not support this. I would not recommend this show to anyone.
Other than that it was fine. Good acting. Nice sets. Everything that you would need to make a good Shakespeare, if only it didn’t have that ugly wart of bearlessness.