A Bag Full of Tricks

HAD WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE risen from the grave to see the three-and-a-half hour production of his The Winter's Tale currently being mounted at the Agassiz Theatre, he probably would have suffered a massive heart attack after the first five minutes. But had Shakespeare survived the initial shock of director Paul Warner's very twentieth-century interpretation of his next to last play, the bard would have realized he was watching a very creative mind at work.

In this production. Warner lets his imagination go wild. He uses dozens of bizarre, totally unexpected props to complement his players' fine interpretation of the lines--from the very first scene, with leaping figures dancing to calypso music to the last, in which the characters wear BVD's and very short t-shirts. Immediately upon entering the theater, in fact, the audience is aware that this is no straight, classical production of Shakespeare's text. For within the program, a page-long synopsis of the plot tells us what will transpire on the stage. The synopsis is useful because the plot is not easily gleaned from the actions on stage. In part, this barrage of weird imagery in a shame, because Warner has cast a troupe of fine Shakespeare actors, all of whom have a firm group of the words and deliver them as if they were speaking colloquially.

According to the synopsis, the play spans 16 years and concerns the King of Sicilia, Leontes, whose blind jealousy about his wife Hermione's relationship with his friend the King of Bohemia--Polixenes--leads to the supposed death of his wife, the abandonment of his newly born daughter in the countryside, the death of his young son, and ultimately his isolation in his lonely kingdom. The actual play is filled with mystical presences, such as Leontes most trusted advisor Camillo--who casts spells and forecasts various occurrences--and Paulina, the queen's confidante, who seems to have some special relationship with the gods.

In Warner's version, occult occurrences are almost taken for granted--they appear in almost every scene. But the significance of these scenes is cheapened by Warner's reliance on flashy costumes, anachronistic props, and the original music by Peter Melnick. These external ornaments overshadow the plot, and the three-and-a-half-hour production gathers most of its strength from the attempt to destroy our conceptions of how a Shakespeare play should be performed.

EACH IMAGE WARNER uses is cleverly conceived. Yet their incredible number makes difficult for the audience to absorb their opinion significant. All of the following appear at some point on the at some point on the two-levelled stage, shopping carts rifles, Mickey Mouse masks, a bathtub, a television, Twinkies, a refrigerator filled with McDonald's food and beer, walkie-talkie, larger than-life-sized photo stills, a microphone, a campers, a bare lightbulb, a Brown Bruins hat, a piano, a vacuum cleaner, a coffin and--last but not least--water guns. The costumes, which range from the several green aforementioned t-shirts to cheerleader costumes, beautiful long gowns, and red overalls complement the music, which continues during and in between scenes and ranges from classics to jazz to rock 'n roll to highly progressive synapse next songs. Warner does integrate these various tools into the action, but all the characters' waltzing to the music, eating the food, and getting in and out of the coffin, slows things down considerably.

Despite the prop impediments, the cast, filled with Boston professional actors, veteran Harvard actors, and several novices to the Harvard stage, has no trouble delving into its characters. Freshman Michael Albion gives a sensitive portrayal of King Leontes, using his monologues to reveal his characters' insecurity, blind rage, and pompous narcissicism. Maryann Bergonzi as Paulina and Pamela Knickrehm as Hermione, two local actresses, give superb performances. Bergonzi stands out with her exquisite enuncition and her somber, melancholy, yet determined facial expressions. Two more freshmen--Tucker McCrady as Florizel, King Polixenes' son, and Laurence Bouvard as Leontes's long-lost daughter Perdita--perform on the same finely-tuned level as the professionals.

Gerald Fox as Camillo gives the play's most memorable performance because he changes accents as often as others change props. His identities range from his own proper English accent to a puted French-German cadence. Fox moves around the stage, playing off the other character's syncracies.

ONE CANNOT HELP WONDERING why Warner relies so much on external workings when his cast's acting talent could have carried the play. Everything is intensely visual. Warner brilliantly sets the actions on two levels, using both the regular platformed stage and the flat space in front, usually used for the orchestra. The characters move all over the theater, sitting in the seats, entering and existing from side doors, the actual stage, and a back door behind the audience Heads are constantly turning to follow the roaming.

The stage itself is equally unusual, with a moving platforms for the scenes set in the shepherd's modern living room and a long screen occasionally revealing revealing silhouettes of characters. The characters also periodically open and close the stage's curtain, smoothing transitions from one scene to another as well as emphasizing their own movements.

The technical feats strike the eye as visually attractive and ingenious, but they don't fit into any one pattern or interpretation. Rather, Warner seems confused about where in time to place this play. While the long flowing gowns suggest antiquity, for instance, the beer and television are unmistakably modern.

OTHER INTERPRETATIVE PROBLEMS also crop up, the heavy-handed treatment of sexuality, whether heterosexual or homosexual, at times insults the audience's sense of propriety Kevin Jennings as the foppish Autolycus is particularly confusing: appearing out of nowhere. Autolycus' frenzied gesticulations, night-clubbish singing of Shakespeare's brilliant poetry and sexual rapport with several characters seem unnecessary and purposeless.

Such a performance, with all its sparkle, cloaks a lack of substance and mars several sections of the play. The props, in the end, are nothing more than distracting ornaments, prompting the audience to grow extremely restless by the end of each 90-minute act. Had Warner held himself back and trimmed down the play to a more manageable two and-a-half hours, the acting would have received the emphasis it deserves. Instead, bogged down by a bizarre interpretation which makes the audience wonder if Warner read the same Shakespeare text that has been in print for the past 40 years. Robecca J. Joseph