The first half rips your heart out. The second attempts, tenderly, to put it back again. This is The Winter’s Tale, currently being performed at The Tobacco Factory, Bristol.
In Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, King Leontes of Sicilia, in a fit of jealous paranoia, falsely accuses his wife Queen Hermione of adultery with their friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia. Quickfire catastrophe unfolds.
Before you know it, the couple’s newborn daughter, Perdita, has been abandoned on a Bohemian hillside, left to the mercy of wolves and ravens. Sixteen years later, raised by the mercy of Bohemian shepherds instead, Perdita falls in love with Polixenes’ son. There are disguises. There are japes. And, astonishingly, there is reconciliation.
