It is the aural part of Madden's performance, however, that severely damages of this difficult role is that it requires the actor to be overwrought for a prolonged time and yet clear. Madden gargles his denunciation of Camillo, and speech after speech in his lengthy argument with Paulina is not intelligible. And when he comes to speaking over the wind-storm, it's impossible to make out a single syllable.
Madden has now been acting professionally for exactly 25 years. In 1961 I saw his long-running Hamlet in New York, which demonstrated marked talent. Here at Stratford, seven years ago, he gave us a fascinating but somewhat misguided Richard II. Even then there were signs of vocal gargling. But this has now developed into a most serious affliction, and I don't know whether it is too late to find a remedy.
This Leontes comes as a big disappointment after the impressive one that John Colicos gave us here in the 1958 version. It would, in any case, be hard for anyone today to equal the magnificent Leontes that the late Henry Daniell achieved in the Theatre Guild production that toured the country in 1946.
Ryland's sinned-against and then sinning Polixenes is a winning performance. His delivery of the "I saw his heart in's face" speech is particularly lovely. If he and Madden had exchanged roles. I suspect we'd have a far superior result.
Kahn has assigned the roles of both Queen Hermione and her daughter Perdita to Maria Tucci. He is thus following the lead of Mary Anderson, who in 1887, two years before retiring at 30, made a great hit playing both parts. The doubling of roles was of course a commonplace in Shakespeare's company. The problem here is that Hermione and Perdita both appear together in the final scene. Although Perdita has only six lines, it is crucial for the harmony and symmetry of the ending that nobody be missing, that we see two middle-aged couples and one young couple happily united Kahn's solution is to cut the six lines and bring on a stand in for Perdita with her back to the audience.
The text makes a point of calling attention to the resemblance between the two women, and Maria Tucci does beautifully by them both. She is at her best as the warm and unflappable queen eloquent in her restraint even in the face of ferocity.
Quite in contrast is Paulina the queen's lady-in-waiting, cowed by nobody. She is one of drama's supreme steamrollers, telling off the king to his face, later functioning as his conscience and orchestrating the finale. Florence Reed, whose Paulina electrified audiences in the theater guild production, will forever remain the paragon. This time, Bette Henritze invokes plenty of strength; her voice is a trifle monotonous, but this is admirable work all the same.
As Paulina's husband Antigonus, William Larsen is forceful in defending Hermione to Leontes. When, on executing the order to expose the queen's baby daughter to fate and the elements he narrates his dream about Hermione, we actually see the queen upstage hovering in the air. Antigonus's departure is accompanied by Shakespeare's most startling stage direction: "Exit pursued by a bear," In Elizabethan days a real bear was used, such as the celebrated Sackerson mentioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor. This practice was revived in the 1948 British production, but it's a risky business. On the other hand, dressing someone up in a bear outfit and parading him across stage on all fours would today surely elicit laughter at what is intended as a serious and even terrifying moment. Kahn takes the best approach by stylizing the animal, somewhat along the lines of the horses currently to be seen on Broadway in Shaffer's Equus. The bear is undisguisedly a person on two feet wearing a golden bear's head. Since the bear devours Antigonus offstage, that's one problem no director need tackle.
As Florizel, Polixenes's teenage son and suitor of Perdita, Richard Backus is an attractive chap. But he is not at ease with classical poetic diction. One is constantly aware of listening to an actor mouthing lines rather than a person voicing thoughts.
Of those belonging to the pastoral life of Bohemia, it is the Autolycus of Fred Gwynne that stands high above the rest, His rubbery face and his antic movements are a joy and though he is a liar and a thief (like his protonym in Greek mythology), one can't help loving the rascal, Gwynne has a way of taking lines that are obscure on the page and making them seem perfectly natural. He can also put over Shakespeare's puns--as when, in a colloquy about a three-voice song,he turns a ballad scroll into a phallus while assuring the others. "I can bear my part." He handles his several songs with aplomb too--especially his first. "When daffodils begin," which is appropriately, an example of the old reverdie, a song of nature's joy in the return of spring. Lee Hoiby's music, which is not very helpful in the first half of the show becomes a lot better when we get to the outdoor singing and dancing, which Kahn wisely allows to go on at considerable length (with choreography by Elizabeth Keen).
Laurinda Barrett, as Emilia, deserves a kind word for her prison scene, and Theodore Sorel for his yeoman doubling as a lord a trial officer, and a gentleman.
It Madden offered Leontes, did spring at the chance and fall, there by making this not the local summer for The Winter's Tale the show is still well enough seasoned.
[Ed. Note--The drive to the picturesque American Shakespeare Theatre's grounds on the Housatonic River takes about two and a half hours via the Massachusetts Turnpike, Interstate 80 and 91, and the Connecticut Turnpike to Exit 32 or 31. Performances in the air conditioned theatre tend to begin rather promptly at 2 p.m. or 8 p.m. and a group of singers offers madrigals on the lawn beforehand. There are free facilities for picnickers on the premises.]