Bohemian rhapsody
Royals rage as Bohemia raves in Cal Shakes's The Winter's Tale.

By Robert Avila

THE WINTER'S TALE , mixing ample doses of tragedy and comedy, can be a tough play to get right. Though classified as a romance – love assailed, then redeemed through the mysterious workings of fate – its elements are richer and deeper than that. Director Lisa Peterson closes California Shakespeare Festival's season with an ambitious production that, while making the most of the play's light and shadow, spreads itself a little thin in the process.

In its tragic dimension, The Winter's Tale is a case study in the nature of jealousy. King Leontes of Sicilia (Andy Murray) suspects his wife, Hermione (Stephanie Roth Haberle), of bearing the bastard child of his friend Polixenes, King of Bohemia (L. Peter Callender). Jealousy's bright light illuminates with damning clarity the smallest details, while casting impenetrable shadows on everything around them. Leontes – ignoring the good sense of his loyal subjects' entreaties – is helpless to resist. He decides to kill Polixenes, charging his man Camillo (Dan Hiatt) with the task. Camillo instead warns Polixenes and flees with him to Bohemia, while Hermione is separated from her son and jailed. She gives birth to a daughter behind bars, and Leontes orders the child abandoned in the wild, where it is found and raised by a Bohemian shepherd (Warren Keith) and his son (Sky Soleil). Hermione's torment causes their firstborn, the young prince Mamillius (Brennan Pickman-Thoon), to die of worry, and the news of his death causes her collapse. She is subsequently (but falsely) reported dead by the faithful, fearless Paulina (Domenique Lazano). The deaths are enough to smother Leontes' madness and in despair he repents his actions.

Murray allows Leontes' tyrannical rage to build quickly, but he prefers to deliver his asides to the audience with a challenging swagger rather than the prurient paranoia written into Shakespeare's character. Still, he's an excellent foil for Haberle, who is simply riveting in the scene where Hermione – as proud and defiant as she is agonized – meets her accusers.

At intermission, the play's action shifts to Bohemia, 16 years later; the audience, meanwhile, moves from the theater proper to the area directly outside its main entrance. Leontes' abandoned daughter, Perdita (Myle Balugay), raised as shepherdess, has won the heart of Polixenes' son Florizel (David Ryan Smith), but the king – who has lived well over the years – forbids his son's marriage to someone he considers lowborn.

Kate Edmunds's design for Sicilia reflects the refined but austere backdrop to Leontes' mounting dementia: clean right angles, bare trees etched against rectangular frames, all in shades of gray. Bohemia, on the other hand, is nothing but a party – a '60s-style rave that begins at intermission just outside the amphitheater, where a flock of young Bohemians in colorful flower-child costumes, scattered about like American Bandstand extras, dance to DJ Quest.

There is a lot to work out, and, against the backdrop of a Bohemian sheep-shearing festival, it unfolds: Time (Joan Mankin) arrives atop a brightly painted bus; a rapping version of the minstrel-thief Autolycus (a versatile, charismatic Coleman Domingo) appears on a motorcycle; dancers dance; rap fans swoon. It's a three-ring circus, and the cast pulls it off without a hitch.

Finally, the action moves back into the amphitheater, and a kind of synthesis is achieved: Leontes and Hermione miraculously reunite, the young lovers wed, and Camillo has eyes for Paulina. But if the ending is happy, it's also unsettling; lives have been horribly disrupted, if not ruined or lost entirely. Peterson exploits this with a memorable final image of the young (dead) prince Mamillius, garbed in ethereal white pajamas, running into the arms of Time (Joan Mankin) and disappearing – a dramatic coda that underscores the bittersweet consolation of a lesson learned at great price.

Despite this, the return to Sicilia feels deflated after the theme park outside, as if substance has been sacrificed to spectacle. Other minor missteps – including a rather superfluous crooning Poet Lord (the admittedly smooth Sean Haberle) – seem rooted in the same problem. A fine cast and an impressive production design can't help but make this Winter's Tale an enjoyable experience, even if through all the dazzle we still feel like we're missing something.

'The Winter's Tale' runs through Sept. 29. Sat.-Sun., 1:30 p.m., Golden Gate Park, west of the Conservatory of Flowers. Free. www.sfshakes.org.