From tragedy to comedy to romance, 'The Winter's Tale' has it all
Story Stephanie De Pasquale
Original Review
The Prenzie Players’ season opener, “The Winter’s Tale,” is a Shakespearean comedy that starts off in the vein of a tragedy. It then takes the audience on a roller coaster of emotions as the major characters deal with jealously and death, followed by the comedic relief comes from ad-libbing minor characters and a happy ending.
The tragedy portion begins when Leontes, the king of Sicilia (Adam Lewis), accuses his wife, Queen Hermione (Beth Woolley), of carrying the bastard child of Polixenes, the king of Bohemia (played by Prenzie newcomer David Furness).
Lewis is wonderful as the enraged Leontes, who plots the unsuccessful murder of Polixenes and sends his legitimate daughter off to be abandoned in the wilderness, which results in the deaths of his wife and son. His face shakes with anger as he delivers his soliloquies and later weeps in pain when he realizes the impact of his wrongs.
The play lightens up in the second half, set 16 years later, when the abandoned Princess Perdita, played by Stephanie Moeller, has been adopted by a shepherd’s family that is celebrating a feast.
It is in the second half that Jeremy Mahr steals the show as the dishonest opportunist Autolycus. The actor, who could shop in the men’s big and tall department, appears onstage in a pair of dirty long underwear and a white undershirt to convince another character he’s been robbed. When the other, smaller and slimmer character attempts to help him up, Mahr becomes dead weight and, in the long and very funny struggle to help him up, picks the pockets of the other character.
Mahr has several other funny moments as he constantly changes his appearance to pull off another scheme, including posing as a bard and throwing out handfuls of condoms to festival-goers as well as losing his pants while running offstage with a wheelbarrow full of goods he’s stolen.
The festival scene is also entertaining as the shepherds speak with Southern accents, which only adds to the hilarity and turns a dance into a hoedown.
There were a few wardrobe malfunctions in the play. Mahr’s long underwear fell down a little too low during the pickpocket scene, and Moeller’s underwear were constantly visible under her jeans skirt that kept riding up too high during the very physical scenes before and after the festival. Shorts would be more appropriate considering that the scene direction involves the character straddling Prince Florizel (Cole McFarren).