Go! REVIEW

The Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival has been around (with other names) since 1993. In that time, it’s nearly exhausted the canon of William Shakespeare.

One of the last hold-outs is the current production, “The Winter’s Tale,” a play rarely produced anywhere.

This says a lot about the script, one of what the scholars call Shakespeare’s “problem plays.”

Indeed, the play is probably best known for one of Shakespeare’s most famous stage directions: “Exit, pursued by a bear” (to the company’s credit, the bear was one of the highlights of the show).

That’s not to discredit the rest of the cast, however. Nick Rose gave King Leontes a fair shot, although there’s not much in the script to explain exactly why he was so consumed with jealously that he would throw  his wife (Corinne Mohlenhoff) in prison and send an assassin out to kill his best friend (Matt Johnson), the King of Bohemia, who apparently went to the same king school.

That, along with an abandoned baby, make up for a fairly dark and tragic first act, but one of the problems of “The Winter’s Tale” is the sudden shift in tone to a romantic comedy in Act Two.

The company doesn’t try to mask the 180 turn at intermission, but let the play be as it is. Shakespeare’s romantic comedies often utilize bizarre plot points like mistaken identies and the use of unlikely disguises. Here, the abandoned baby is now a blossoming shepherdess and engaged to the Prince of Bohemia, one of Shakespeare’s most incredible coincidences. Giles Davies keeps the entertainment value high, however, as the con man and cut-purse Autolycus, a part that really deserves a better play.

Though flawed from the outset, “The Winter’s Tale” still has historical significance, if only because of its author’s reputation on far more important works, and in the hands of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company it is more than a relic, but a piece of living theater.