Anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale knows that one of its most famous moments is a single stage direction, towards the end of Act Three: Exit, pursued by a bear. The person doing the exiting is Antigonus, an advisor to King Leontes of Sicilia, who reluctantly carries out the king’s orders to abandon the baby princess Perdita in Bohemia. In any production, the question of how the bear will be handled hangs in the air: Will it be a person in a bear suit? An effect created by projections, puppets, or sound and lighting changes? Maybe even a real bear?
As if to acknowledge the fact that some in the audience will be waiting to see what they do with it, the current production at Theatre for a New Audience, running in Brooklyn through April 15, goes ahead and lets the bear open the play. On a darkened stage, as artificial snow begins to fall, the bear (and yes, it’s a person in a bear suit) enters and lifts its arms to the sky, welcoming the winter. For a moment it’s a mysterious, almost mystical sight, until the bear starts rubbing snow under its arms and all over its fur, as though taking a shower—and the scene shifts into humor. That strange, and a little jarring, juxtaposition of gravitas and whimsy is true to the play, with its unusual blend of tragedy and comedy, redemption and regret, joy and melancholy. It also sets up the way in this production, directed by Arin Arbus (who’s developed a reputation for her insightful, intelligent approach to Shakespeare), the bear becomes a thread that runs through the entire play, hovering over it from the beginning.
In Winter’s Tale, shifts in weather and setting illustrate changes in tone. Sicilia is sparse and completely white, the ground coated in snow, the only piece of furniture a single bench. In the opening scene, Leontes (Anatol Yusef, who lets hints of instability peek through from the start), his wife Hermione (a poised Kelley Curran), and his friend Polixenes (Dion Mucciacito), king of Bohemia, enter with a crowd, all dressed up and laughing, returning from a party that’s ended. This quickly leads into tension. Hermione convinces Polixenes to extend his visit, prompting Leontes’ suspicions that the two are having an affair. In contrast, Bohemia is introduced with a shower of vibrant green leaves falling from the sky, and preparations for a party that’s about to begin.
The scene with Antigonus (Oberon K.A. Adjepong) and the bear serves as a kind of juncture between the two major sections of the play: The first three acts are characterized by Leontes’ spiral into jealousy and tyranny in Sicilia, resulting in death and destruction; the second two are largely spent in the idyllic, pastoral setting of Bohemia. It’s also a balance between death and birth: As Antigonus meets his unfortunate end, the baby is discovered by a shepherd and his son. The small scene is a collision of the varying tones the play strikes. Here, when the scene does arrive, it’s drawn out, and slightly self-aware. Once again, the bear embodies a strange mix of the comedic and the tragic, facing off with Antigonus and exaggerating the moment’s drama. Though it’s funny, the results of the interaction, which we hear in later dialogue, are tragic.
In an early scene, Mamillius, the young prince, plays with a stuffed bear, growing unsettled as his father acts increasingly unhinged. Later, there’s a key moment when Paulina (Antigonus’ wife, a no-nonsense Mahira Kakkar) calls Leontes a tyrant. It’s the first time someone dares apply the word to him so directly, and this production gives it full weight—the other advisors look momentarily frozen. In Bohemia, there’s another line about those in power and the way they can be easily corrupted: “though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold.”
Are we to see the bear as a symbol of tyranny or power? As an embodiment of the complicated, conflicting, and ultimately very human mess of emotions and tones the play strikes? A tyrant is a human, after all—and that makes his mistakes all the more dangerous.
Originally written for Columbia Journalism School
Photo by Carol Rosegg, via Theatre for a New Audience
