With Constellations, a revival of Caryl Churchill’s A Number and Carmen Disruption, director Michael Longhurst has been responsible for some of the most inspired productions of recent years. He’s doesn’t just direct plays, he textures them.
That’s less in evidence with this version of Shakespeare’s late romance, which has one of the most preposterous yet transcendental and moving final scenes in the canon as the statue of Hermione comes alive. Played out under the molten honey illuminations of the candlelit replica Jacobean playhouse, it works its magic a treat.
But this is very much a play of two halves: the intensity and darkness of the first half, in which Leontes’s unreasonable jealousy provokes tragedy, gives way to the light comedy of the second. It’s one that many directors before Longhurst have found hard to reconcile. It’s made all the more difficult here because the formal confines of the Wanamaker playhouse are well suited to the suffocating Sicilian court, where anger and mistrust suddenly flare like a candle flame in the dark, but not to the sheep-shearing festivities of Bohemia. It makes the comedy a mite strenuous.
But there are some nice touches. When Leontes (John Light), blinded by rage, rejects his baby daughter, there is a vision of the grown Perdita (Tia Bannon) in the gallery, voicing the gurgling, whimpering sounds of the babe. It connects the actions of the present to the future. There’s a fine performance from Niamh Cusack, who makes Paulina particularly fierce – so much so that you are surprised she so meekly acquiesces to Leontes’ matchmaking at the end – and Rachael Stirling brings grace and passion to the wronged Hermione. But it’s a solid evening, not a thrilling one.
- At Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, until 22 April. Box office: 020-7401 9919.
