Northern Aggression

I, like many of you, spent the day yesterday at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah. We took a field trip down to see The Winter's Tale. It was really great to see the play so soon after reading the play, it was a lot easier to compare the two and learn from the story. For example, while reading the play I was having some trouble understanding the role and purpose of Autolycus, but after seeing him it made a lot more sense (and was a lot more entertaining).

Here are some of the big observations I made while watching the play:

- Probably the most striking feature of this Shakespeare play was that the costumes were from the 20th century, not the 16th or 17th. But they didn't change anything else or modernize anything else about the play. The characters' names were the same, two lords of Sicilia were still sent to the Oracle at Delphi, etc. But I think the costumes really added another dimension and was a very insightful decision made by the director Brian Vaughn (who also played Leontes).

The whole first half of the play, I was thinking "This is Winter's Tale meets The Great Gatsby," because that's what the costumes reminded me of. Very urban, very high society.

But then, when the second half of the play began in Bohemia, and it was very rural and country. That distinction of course could be made from Shakespeare's original play. But what added to it was the costumes. It was especially notable when Polixenes and Camillo came to the sheep-shearing festival dressed as Colonel Sanders.

That's when it hit me: Sicilia was the north and Bohemia was the south.

Here are some other images that sort of evoke the north and the south in the early 20th century.

North:

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

Citizen Kane

The Philadelphia Story

South:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Gone With the Wind

Forrest Gump

O Brother Where Art Thou?

- The other really cool thing about this performance of The Winter's Tale was who they chose to play Time, to open the play after the intermission. The actor who played Time was the same actor who played Antigonus. And it wasn't just to double-dip and save on personnel. The actor came out on stage in his whole Antigonus costume and make-up, beard and everything. But as he began to speak, he took off his suit jacket and beard.

I wonder what this was trying to say. Here's my theory: maybe all along, Antigonus was Time, or Fate, and through that capacity he was able to take Perdita to a place where eventually her true identity would be discovered. Sort of like how we Mormons sometimes think of The Three Nephites. Time/Fate is all-knowing, and somehow knew that by taking Perdita to Bohemia that night, she would be discovered by the shepherd and eventually reunited with her family. And after the intermission, Time comes to reveal that, 16 years later, his plan has been realized.