On night three of my trip to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival I saw my second Shakespeare play, The Winter's Tale. This was another indoor play and overall it was quite good. The first half was excellent, with a serious solemn story well acted. I very much enjoyed it.
The second half, where the scene switches from Sicilia to Bohemia, the tone of the play changed dramatically. It’s normally supposed to be different, but as has been a theme in the three plays I’ve seen so far this year, they really pushed the comic aspects over the top. The actor who played the thief, Autolycus, was very hammy (in the vein of Snidely Whiplash), as he was in the previous day’s play. There it didn’t seem so bad since that was a farce. But here it seemed way too much. Not only was his performance too hammy for me, but he seemed to dominate the story of the second half, which I don’t recall being the balance in the play.
Apart from that annoyance, they brought it back to Sicilia and wrapped up the play beautifully. All in all I enjoyed it. I hope I’m not just getting crabby unable to enjoy humor.
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