Review of the New Jersey Opera Theatre's production of Gounod's "Romeo et Juliet," published by EDGE Philadephia

The New Jersey Opera provides many reasons to see their current production of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Besides the well-effected choral numbers throughout, and particularly all of Act III (with the strong minor performances in the roles of Gregorio and Stephano), Barry Steele’s lighting that added both dramatic clarity and psychological depth to Shakespeare’s tragedy, all combine with the mostly strong performances, the emotionally stirring music and condensed libretto to make this the highlight of the New Jersey Opera’s summer season.

The libretto by Jules Barbier and Michael Carre provides reason enough to see this opera even for most familiar with Shakespeare’s play. Their rendition both condenses and embellishes the familiar story; streamlining the plot by avoiding both the fleshed out background in the Capulet and Montague strife, and the close camaraderie of Roméo , Mercutio, and Benvolio. This focuses nearly all the attention on the title characters, even opening the play on the Capulet’s ball, where the young lovers first meet. Moreover, their embellishes deepen the tragedy’s effect-both on the Capulets and the audience-in the first by having Juliette’s mock death take place during her arranged wedding to Paris, in the second by allowing her to awaken in time to sing one last duet of contrition and love-only moments after Roméo drinks the poison that kills him.

Mark Verzatt’s direction adds a few flourishes of his own-from the ballet dancing to enhance the mood in Act I’s ball, the consistently superb choral singing, to the overall feeling of intimacy his production conveys-all help craft an emotionally stirring production in the small space of the McCarter’s Berlind Theater.

However, the main reason to see this production is for the rare and early opportunity to see Manon Strauss Evrard, the exceptional and highly promising young soprano playing the role of Juliette.

Though only 25, her amazingly mature and rich voice conveys the impression that she’s closer to 40 (though her appearance never suggests this). Her vocal instrument is all at once bold, deep, rich in texture and tone, expansive and controlled, especially in her broad and powerful lower range. From her initial Ecoutez to her impressive waltz in Act II, through her duets with Roméo , and the magnificent Act III quartet, her voice is a dream on air to experience, her performance one long intoxication of musical delight to hear.

The role, moreover, seems one this native Frenchwoman was born to sing, both in her elegant articulation and in her dramatic presentation of the role. Evrard recreates the fire of youth and youthful passions, while tempering them with a psychologically haunting portrayal-either when wrenching her arms in despair or fearing to take the narcotic that would fake her death. In this, her Juliette was no child falling in love or resisting an arranged marriage, but a heroine brought forth on stage with power and force-a rarity in this character as intriguing as it was delightful.

With few exceptions, the rest of the cast struggled to match her performance, and only Nina Yoshida Nelsen’s lone but lovely aria shows an equal vocal polish. Scott Ramsay’s Roméo nearly equals her at times, and while his voice is honey-toned and sweet in his upper range (once he gets there), he makes the jumps in his arias sound difficult to perform.

Only the basses fail to round out the cast, with Matthew Edwards vocally unsatisfying as Le Compte Capulet, and Matthew Curran, though strong in his dramatically and musically more impressive role in NJO’s current production of The Magic Flute, appearing here as Frere Laurent, only competently used and portrayed.

But some asymmetries, whether in nature, or on the stage, are nonetheless perfect in their own right, as the entire cast in this regard becomes a solid backdrop for Evrard’s magnificent performance.

Already having performed in Prague and soon headed to Hong Kong and the Netherlands, the NJO achieved a minor coup in grabbing this bright young voice for a few weeks in the summertime. I can only encourage everyone to buy what few tickets remain-years from now, when Evrard is gracing more prestigious venues, those fortunate enough to see her here will remember her "young flower in bloom" of Juliette, on the eve of the promise she is certain to become.

Review of the New Jersey Opera Theatre's production of "The Magic Flute," published by EDGE Philadephia

After seeing a production of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, it’s only fitting that I see The New Jersey Opera production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Whereas Shaffer’s play speculated on Mozart’s death at the hands of the Masons, Mozart’s opera presents the evidence for that case. Rich in Masonic imagery and symbolism (not to mention Enlightenment contrasts of reason and emotion, and the place of the individual versus the value of the social order), The Magic Flute has escaped this lore of conspiracy and murder, as its enjoyable music and hilarious libretto have made it one of the most popular operas of all time.

The opera tells the story of the prince Tamino (Greg Warren), ensnared by the Queen of the Night (Colleen Daly) into rescuing her daughter Pamina (Kisma Jordan), held captive by Sarastro (Matthew Curran) in his palace. With his sidekick Papageno (Peter Couchman), Tamino sets forth on this quest, and encounters the surprisingly virtuous Sarastro, who convinces the errant prince of the Queen’s deceit. Offered Pamina’s hand in marriage if he can overcome the trials necessary to gain admittance to the Temple of Light and Reason, Tamino succeeds, realizing his character and his place in this tale of friendship, brotherhood, and moral order.

For the opener of their fourth summer season, Director Scott Altman has assembled a very talented young cast to perform in his musically outstanding production of Mozart’s opera at Princeton’s McCarter Theater. Curran’s Sarastro anchored the entire production with the gravitas of his rich bass, finding a counterpart both in the libretto and in Ben Wagner’s equally commanding texture in the role of the Speaker.

Greg Warren turned Tamino into an earnest prince, giving soft yet heartfelt interpretations of his many arias, a lightness that alas, only showed the beautiful color of his voice in his lower register. And while Colleen Daly gave a diligent and satisfying version of Der Holle Rache (one of the most difficult arias in the soprano repertoire); Jordan’s Pamina emerged as the pleasant surprise of the evening, displaying a wonderful clarity in her lovely voice.

The choral singing provided a superb backdrop, adding needed grandeur to the Temple scenes (see below), and the group singing of both the three Ladies and three spirits enchanted whenever they appeared to motivate the plot.

However, the true joy of this Magic Flute appeared in feathery form-that of the bird catcher Papageno. Playing the goofy sidekick in this often goofy opera, his voice-whether spoken or sung-added all of the intentional humor, compensated for a bad choice (again, keep reading), and elevated the quality of this production tremendously.

I only take issue with Altman’s decision to keep the songs in the original German, while having the actors speak the text in translated English. Conceptually, this is not a bad decision, provided that the singers all act even moderately well. But here, only Couchman’s Papageno handles the demands that this decision imposes, and while his mannerisms and comic timing don’t equal his singing, it’s only because his singing is excellent, and he’s hysterical nonetheless.

Had Altman left the entire libretto in German, he could’ve avoided placing this burden on his singers, allowing them to focus all of their energies on perfecting the songs, and enabling the audience to sit undistracted by any type of acting while they read the supertitles of the German spoken on stage. As acted-not poorly, but not well-the interludes of English dialogue disrupt the world of the opera (created by the song and music) and cleave the action in two, both slowing the play down in between musical numbers, and creating a noticeable imbalance between the singing and acting passages.

However, though well founded, this is a personal disagreement that much of the audience enjoyed while both listening to songs they knew and while being drawn into the drama by not having to "read along." (The few German speakers in the audience, well...)

Only the blank sets and occasional prop failures (lights going out or not working) made this young company look and seem their age. At many points, not even the lighting hinted at a setting, particularly with Tamino alone on a bare stage with merely a bench and full orchestra to differentiate this performance from a rehearsal. At all other times, white floor-to-ceiling planks served as Temple, mountains, palace, etc., and worse, the poorly executed and low quality projections made the technical aspects of the production appear all the more amateurish, especially in comparison to the well performed music and singing.

Conductor Brent McMunn treated the music with full respect-giving it a light and lively strength, while tempering the sound enough not to overwhelm the cast. And overall, Altman created a musically dynamic production, with a well-balanced cast, and staging and direction, particularly in the choral or group numbers, that made this Magic Flute far greater than the sum of its parts.

In that respect, I was extremely glad when Altman announced before the show that the entire first weekend of performances had sold out, giving more evidence that this young company, approaching their fifth anniversary in November, is quickly starting to fill the massive void left by the closing of the New Jersey Summer Opera Festival in 2003. Though very young, the New Jersey Opera holds all the promise of restoring the festival’s past glory and more, they are a group of talented young professionals whose talent in its own right, deserves to be heard.

Review of "The Taming of the Shrew" at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, published by EDGE Philadelphia

In academic circles, the heated debates about Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew focus solely on the misogynistic plot, completely ignoring the humor of the play. In their current production of the same, the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival takes the opposite tact-inserting humor at every possible opportunity, in a staging that occasionally comes at the expense of the play itself.

Shrew opens upon the young noble Lucentio (a smooth and mellow Zach Robidas) and his servant Tranio (Matt Pfeiffer) overhearing the laments of an awkward pair of suitors, Gremio (Wayne Turney) and Hortensio (Aaron Galligan-Stierle). Both fawn over the delicate and beautiful Bianca (Rachel Joffred), while railing against her father’s decision to withhold her hand until he can marry off his elder daughter Katherine (Grace Gonglewski). However, Kate’s foul tongue and temper make this a seemingly impossible task-her reputation and violent behavior scaring off all possible suitors in town.

Enter Petruchio (Greg Wood), an ambitious and equally abusive traveler seeking his fortune, willing to square off against Kate to secure her immense dowry. Petruchio plots to confound her every action with the opposite of her intent, and in the spirit of "perfect love," break down her stubborn contentiousness in order to make her into the perfectly submissive wife, even pausing to ask the audience if they can offer him a better way to tame a shrew.

Petruchio’s intent, and that he achieves it - Kate’s closing speech is an unmatched example of the victim’s compliance - is what enrages everyone, though to be fair, Shakespeare attempts to show in Bianca how an initial, yet manipulative docility, will lead later to a husband ruled by his mistress. Yet no one watching PSF’s production has the time to feel anger, let alone think about what’s being said, as they’re too busy laughing at the hilarious comedy crafted here by director Russell Treyz.

Drawing on every conceivable source - from Monty Python toSaturday morning cartoons - Treyz’s production capitalizes on every opportunity for humor. Wood’s initial entrance takes a self-referential poke at his age (in his mid-40’s, his character must nonetheless introduce himself as a "young man seeking his fortune"), and Gonglewski childishly torments with wet willies, Indian burns, and even titty-twisters. (I wonder if Treyz had Gonglewski do this to see just how many critics would write the word "titty-twister" into their reviews.)

But the bulk of the humor belongs to the superb ensemble, led here by Turney’s Gremio, and Chris Faith and Andy Wertner as the dimwitted servants Grumio and Biondello. If the servants can’t take Petruchio’s malice seriously, than neither can we, and the result is one long stretch of mirth and laughter, as even Wood and Gonglewski had to hide their amusement during Faith’s standout performance.

Unfortunately, the physical gags and comic inserts often hindered the dialogue, lessening the comprehension of Shakespeare’s lines, entertaining the audience while making them struggle to stay with the story. And with the cast assembled here, the dialogue and expressions deserved full attention.

From his first entrance, Wood strutted about the stage like a cat waiting to pounce-both relaxed and full of tension-and declaimed Shakespeare’s lines with the ease of a native Elizabethan. Likewise, both he and Gonglewski ignited the stage as the warring pair of lovers-she as the ferocious flame that threatened to consume the cast, and he as the explosive and pugnacious bully who set forth to extinguish her. Later, her Kate became a true delight, as the talented Gonglewski conveyed the whole of her character’s evolution from Shrew to submissive with just the lift of her eyes and the turn of her smile, melting both Petruchio and audience alike.

Besides making this one of the funniest and well-acted productions of Shrew I’ve witnessed (three so far just this year), Treyz attempts nothing new or different here. Or rather, he attempts an opening where the half-costumed cast mulls about the stage, some talking on cell phones, others listening to a radio, and where Alan Coates (brilliant and thoroughly underused in his minor part as Vincentio) interrupts this activity to welcome the audience to the "final dress rehearsal." An interesting approach, but unfortunately, Treyz does nothing else with it, neither integrating the notion of a dress rehearsal into the piece, or coming back around to this idea at the play’s end (Shakespeare already presents numerous opportunities to speak to the audience or break away from realism). All his device did was tack fifteen more minutes onto a play stuffed with the use of extras (as servants), added jokes, and Benny Hill inspired chases back and forth across the stage.

Beyond this attempt, Treyz presented an invigorating and funny, though fairly straightforward production of this play. However, given the truly magnificent cast, and the fact that most interpretations of Shakespeare range from mediocre to contemptuous, I’ll take the superb playing over bad innovations any day of the week, and highly recommend this production for the quality of the performances alone.

Review of "The Mystery of Irma Vep" at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, published by EDGE Philadelphia

What’s a play filled with werewolves, ghouls, vampires, mummies, and feisty cross-dressing Victorian romance doing in a Shakespeare Festival? In Charles Ludlam’s 1984 off-Broadway hit, The Mystery of Irma Vep, the answer is doing what the Bard did best in his own time - packing houses with a play that’s as wildly entertaining as it is original. Initially spoofing the Hitchcock film Rebecca, Irma Vep’s "plot" centers around Mandacrest Estate, home to the newly married Lady Enid, the second wife who mysteriously sleeps all day, and Lord Edgar, an Egyptologist still recovering from the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of his first wife, Ms. Irma. The staff - a prissy maid still attached to Ms. Irma, Edgar’s first wife, and gluttonous swineherd Nicodemus complicate the new arrangements through their conflicting desires to serve the household’s new mistress, or not, as the case may be. This staple of Victorian melodrama only serves as the backdrop for the bizarre occurrences that come to plague Mandacrest - the appearance of the vampires, werewolves, and spirits, any one of which may or may not be the presumed dead Ms. Irma, or her presumed dead pet wolf, Victor. Edgar flees these torments-both psychological, human, and undead-by travelling to Giza, Egypt, where he discovers a resuscitating mummy that he brings back with him to Mandacrest as one more surrogate for his dead first wife. It’s self-admittedly silly, dishing out one last parody of the genre in the senseless, quickly wrapped up collusion of loose ends. The humor holds the appeal in this play, and even the title becomes one more joke to exploit - a punch line that winks at the audience no less-as Irma Vep is an anagram of the word vampire. The humor ranges from sexual innuendo ("how do you take it?" followed shortly after by "your tea, Miss"), double entendres, cute cultural references (including Janet Jackson’s Superbowl wardrobe mishap), and the, while harping mostly on the campy artificiality in its spoofs of horror films and Victorian novels. An occasional bit of clever wit threads its way through the evening, reminding of Monty Python ("how old is the family?" rejoined by "I don’t know, they’ve been descending for centuries"), and other lines provoke laughter simply because they’re intentionally insufferable, as Lady Enid remarks, "it’s intolerable to marry an Egyptologist and find out that he’s hung up on his mummy." Here, the delivery counts for everything, and these actors do not disappoint. Chris Patrick Mullen, elicits laughter from the moment he walks in, playing the role of the snooty, yet devoted maid Jane Twisden in full drag, with a wig the size of his head and a fey accent that dribbles lines like "when hell freezes over and little devils go ice skating." Brad DePlanche struts in, belly-first, as the swineherd Nicodemus, sporting a goofy, pointy Mohawk and buck teeth, wagging his tongue after crude jokes, some of his lines barely audible from the laughter generated by just his facial expressions alone. Beyond the extraordinary comedic talent displayed by Mullen and DePlanche, the evening’s most entertaining (and difficult) challenge requires these two actors, through a series of quick costume changes and perfectly timed entrances and exits, to play all eight different roles. Here director Jim Helsinger delivers the solid backdrop of staging that allows both DePlanche and Mullen to effect all these changes quickly while never missing a line, even accentuating some of the quickest changes with opportunities for humor. At one of the dozens of stage cues, DePlanche hovers at a doorway as Lady Enid, feigning to weep in order to cover his mouth and speak the lines of the now "offstage" Nicodemus, lines that no one could hear through the incessant audience laughter. Given the two stages available for the PSF productions, Helsinger couldn’t have avoided staging this play in the round without severely diminishing the number of seats available in the smaller Arena Stage. But he could have avoided the unfortunate blocking that too often set both actors facing inward at center stage. Their close talking or whispering at these points, while maybe vital to the script, shielded everyone who didn’t sit in the center section from seeing DePlanche’s or Mullen’s facial expressions - a real loss here, as much of the humor stemmed from their contorted, goofy, or harried pantomime. This one minor, but irritating glitch aside, every aspect of the production contributed to the hilarity of the evening. Bob Phillips surrounded a Victorian parlor with evenly spaced hieroglyphic-covered tiles that made the play seem like some twisted place of banishment on a board game - a bizarre jail for actors in Ludlam’s imagination. Steve TenEyck’s eerie lighting design framed Mandacrest’s exterior with crackling thunderbolts (although someone forgot to raise the Mandacrest chandelier, which then hung inside an Egyptian pyramid during Act II), while Matthew Given’s sound design adroitly punctuated repeated phrases with organ beats in a mock inspiration of terror, and chimed in hysterically when referencing Indiana Jonesand Ghost. However, Lisa L. Zinni’s costumes and wigs provided the real treat, both in terms of technical functionality and contributions to the play’s hilarity, particularly the overinflated bust of the revived mummy that threatened to smother DePlanche, and the towering wigs that threatened both actors with whiplash. Building upon their successful trend of two actors in multiple roles from last year’s Sleuth, PSF has crafted a production here that’s a real blast to watch. While the humor isn’t necessarily of my favorite breed, silliness well done by an impressive cast still entertains wildly. I enjoyed the clever touches the most, especially the set change from Act II’s Egyptian locale back to Mandacrest Manor, where four stagehands appear dressed as mummies to move the furniture, only to suddenly break out into the dance interlude from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Whoever chose that, cast these actors, or chose to stage this play, made this production into a two-hour laugh fest that’s well worth attending.

Review of PSF's Amadeus, published by EDGE Philadelphia

The seemingly smallest choice a director makes can impact the quality and effect of a production immensely. This proved especially true in the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s current production of Amadeus, where director Dennis Razze cast Salieri, the ostensible villain of Peter Shaffer’s play, with the most physically striking actor in his ensemble. After watching their production, and thinking about this choice for three days and it still strikes me as both misguided and brilliant all at once.

In Amadeus, envy’s rule of "if you can’t beat ’em, destroy them," plays out in Shaffer’s psychologically penetrating story of the competitive relationship between two 18th Century musicians - Vienna’s Court Composer Antonio Salieri, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Though taking more factual liberty with history than Bush’s press secretary, Shaffer portrays the younger Mozart as an ill-mannered, inspired genius who never revised music against the upright musical mediocrity of his elder contemporary Salieri. When Mozart begins to compose and perform in Vienna, Salieri, though eminently more successful at the time, hears the superior quality of Mozart’s music and vows to destroy him.

In the play, Salieri’s hatred stems from two sources, one unfortunately common-that mediocrity rebels against superior talent; and the other particular to the play: in his youth Salieri made a bargain with God. He tells us that he offered God the following: If you let me become a great composer, I will be your voice in the world, and live my life in virtuous service to your glory.

It’s a clever, powerful and easily understandable dramatic device. Whether in hospital emergency rooms, waiting for test results, or hoping a team wins the Superbowl, everyone’s made a similar compact with the heavens. However, once Salieri hears Mozart’s music, he realizes (imagines, really) that God only pretended to agree to the bargain, giving him early success only to throw him down from a greater height. Mozart, it seems, is how God’s voice truly enters the world, and Salieri vows to become "God’s instructor" and destroy Mozart, who God favors over him.

Though inspired by the story of Cain and Abel (and a smattering of Job), Amadeus is not a religious play, but the story of envy’s wrath played out in the larger context of late 18th century ideas. Steve Burns plays Mozart perfectly (as Shaffer wrote him), the uncouth, brash genius, who lacks diplomacy, and inadvertently offends the entire Viennese Court, particularly her composer Salieri. The look of sheer innocence in Burns eyes and smile as he takes a piece of music written by Salieri and improvises upon it after one hearing, even asking, "that sounds better, doesn’t it," captures the degree of insult laden in Salieri’s later assertion that "what I did to Mozart was nothing compared to what he did to me."

But the role of Salieri is the real challenge in a play that even spites him in the title (though who would go see a play called "Salieri, patron saint of mediocrity?"), and requires a Herculean effort from any actor who must not only narrate the entire play, but rarely leave the stage while featured in nearly every scene. A megalomaniac’s role, Salieri’s journey plunges him from the exaltation of early success, to the envy and frustration that stems from being shown up by a superior talent, to the rage and madness that drive him into thinking that by destroying the life of one man, he can thereby thwart God on earth.

While William Elsman nails the sarcasm and aggrandizing self-importance of the role, he never emanates the sense of frustrated anguish at his comparative mediocrity. Instead, the audience sees a man, not only physically superior to Mozart-he’s more robust, much taller, and because of his good looks, even seems more the libertine than Burns’ boyishly impassioned Mozart-but a composer far more popular in his own time, showered with the trappings of wealth and position. In this, Elsman’s Salieri appears as merely afflicted by an unexplained hang-up stemming from his personal recognition of a superior talent gone unremarked by all those who praise his mediocrity instead.

Unfortunately, this lack of a key component of Salieri’s psychology disengages the audience, making the second half of the evening (showing Salieri’s torment while destroying Mozart) much slower than the first act, which shows the events leading up to and motivating his revenge. Elsman only gives us the effect in words, but never the why in portrayal of a sorrow seemingly out of proportion to his station in life. Yet strangely enough, this fault, though a lack on Elsman’s part, becomes a virtue for Razze’s overall production-playing a Salieri tormented by a superior genius that only he recognizes would probably alienate the audience more.

The remainder of the cast delivers solid performances, particularly Alan Coates’ upright "Baron Fugue," and the amusingly noncommittal "well there it is" attitude of Carl N. Wallnau’s Emperor Joseph, both of whom flesh out the other challenges that Mozart’s genius faces at Court. Only Janine Barris’ delightful turn as his wife, Constanze, adds any humanity and sympathy on Mozart’s side. In this production there isn’t a moment where we side with Mozart’s genius, as throughout, making it hard not to grant Salieri’s request when he asks for "not forgiveness, but understanding."

Of course, Razze eliminated any possibility for the audience to sympathize with Mozart the moment he cast Elsman as Salieri. Beyond the psychological power of the "halo effect" (the notion that physically beautiful people are also morally good), Razze’s decision, and Elsman’s completely sympathetic portrayal illustrate the idea that in the game of envy, there are no villains. Elsman never displays any spite or rancor, no bitterness in how he destroys Mozart (but of course, little regret either), and in this, the director enables every self-righteous member of the audience to see themselves sympathetically-whether when standing in the way of a younger, more qualified co-worker gunning for a promotion, or hindering their better-suited friend chasing the same object of affection.

But perhaps that’s a good thing. If we always sided with the "genius" or person of superior quality, we couldn’t laugh at Paris Hilton while sending her off to jail, we wouldn’t endorse the notion in (little-league) sports that "everyone should play equally," hell, we probably wouldn’t have the whole welfare state, and maybe not even democracy. So maybe Salieri is the hero that our unspoken, envy-driven aspirations deserve, and that idea makes casting the heroic looking Elsman as Razze’s best choice of the evening.

"I am the patron saint of mediocrity," Salieri declares, and Elsman’s portrayal must thereby find a mostly compassionate and understanding audience on any given performance, providing not only an enjoyable evening, but ’moral’ reassurance as well.

Review of "The Winter's Tale" published by EDGE Philadelphia

Philadelphia theatres have closed their doors for summer, enabling some of the area’s best actors to join theatre professionals from around the country at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, where productions rarely fail to dazzle. Their 2007 season opens with Shakespeare’s seldom produced, misleading described as a comedy, yet thoroughly compelling, The Winter’s Tale.

When "all’s true that is mistrusted," jealousy spirals into vicious paranoia as King Leontes suspects his pregnant wife Hermione of infidelity with his childhood friend Polixenes. In his madness, Leontes plots Polixenes murder, denies his son’s parentage, imprisons Hermione, and banishes their newborn daughter Perdita. After a mock trial condemns his wife of treason, the son commits suicide, Hermione dies of grief, and these tragedies shock Leontes back to reason. Chastened by guilt, Leontes devotes his life’s remainder to celibacy and repentance, threatening the future of his kingdom.

Scholars consider The Winter’s Tale one of Shakespeare’s "problem plays" with good reason, as the play seems like a younger Shakespeare, working out elements he later perfected. The first half differs in content, theme, and balance from an episodic second half that appears more modern than Elizabethan. Act One spans a few months, focusing on the tragedy of self-prophesized imaginings, where misapprehension leads to destructive behavior, the effects of which only serve to confirm earlier delusions. Act Two skips sixteen years during intermission, becoming at once light and romantic comedy. Here, the exiled Perdita has grown to discover true love with Florizel, Polixenes’ son. Only forgiveness and past outrage bar their happiness, and through several hastily thrown together episodes, contrition and repentance lead once more to amity amongst the lives Leontes nearly destroyed.

Compounding the play’s structural defects, The Winter’s Tale mixes many themes that by themselves unify earlier works-the battle of the sexes, jealousy and infidelity, justice, guilt, and redemption. However, unlike Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Othello, or The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale plumbs greater psychological depths along these moral lines, as Shakespeare intensifies these themes by concentrating them all in the actions and consequences of one character, Leontes. This results in a psychologically compelling first act, filled with pessimistic despair, which yields to Act Two’s optimistic (and surprise) ending, one that balances the consequences of unintended tragedy with the hope that one can finally absolve themselves of past deeds. In this regard, the sixteen-year gap between the acts allows a passage of time that buries Leontes’ past sins, without which no audience member would accept a greater or earlier redemption.

But the uplifting ending, unbalanced against and seemingly tacked on to the tragedy of Act One, still presents difficulties for any director or production. Luckily, the cast and production give ample reason to think that Shakespeare knew what he was doing.

Greg Wood, though giving no explicit reason for Leontes jealousy, dives headfirst into his character’s madness. Speaking lines in frenzied bursts of rage and anguish, deteriorating physically in gait and posture, he dominates the play’s first half in a masterful portrait of the delusions suffered by anyone who ever suspected that his neighbor "fished his pond in his absence." A Philadelphia favorite, appearing in his 20th PSF show this summer, Wood gives one of the finest and most penetrating performances of his career as a King wracked first by suspicion, later humiliated in contrition by guilt.

If Wood presents the ideal, the rest of the cast proves an equally capable reach. In multiple roles, Tony Lawton and Wayne S. Turney convey humor and humanity, and newcomer Erin Partin charms as the exiled Perdita. Only Anne Lewis gets and gives the chance to equal Wood as Paulina, the lone member of court brave enough to challenge his irrational behavior. Though she easily captures the humor in her role as an outspoken woman among submissive men, she commits to the play’s surprise ending in a strained voice that implies something less than the aggrieved and righteous outrage warranted by the deaths Leontes causes. A minor deficit in her performance, she nonetheless proves that occasionally, truth must yield to dramatic effect.

Director Patrick Mulcahy speeds three hours of staging through a production that contrasts Steve TenEyck’s terrifying lighting that mirrors Leontes obsession against Bob Phillips’ sumptuous, pastel-rich set that proves the reality his suspicions deny. Mulcahy’s only error lies in allowing Lawton to frame the play’s halves in playful audience interaction, then in the same breath trying to convince us that a shaman’s spell causes the misery-producing delusion that follows. While amusing, these unnecessary flourishes only added incoherence to a play where directors need to focus more on surmounting existing difficulties rather than creating them.

However, Mulcahy far more than redeems this minor fault in an ending that effects one of the most fantastical and moving scenes I’ve witnessed on PSF’s stage. This exhilarating moment of redemption-for both Leontes who needs it, and a production that needs none-makes the journey to Allentown worth the trip, from removes far beyond Philadelphia.