1980–81 BBC Shakespeare Production
Directed by Jane Howell, this adaptation featured Rikki Fulton as Autolycus; Robin Kermode as Florizel; Anna Calder-Marshall as Hermione; Jeremy Kemp as Leontes; Margaret Tyzack as Paulina; Debbie Farrington as Perdita; and Robert Stephens as Polixenes.
Henry Fenwick, in his essay on “The Production” printed as part of the booklet the BBC published to accompany the first broadcast of this play, described director Jane Howell as a committed, intense perfectionist (17–18); reported that Howell said that television need not be realistic and that for her the strength of the acting is what counts (18); said that Howell stressed the Englishness of the play despite the “foreign” setting; and said that she professed that she was not interested in being realistic. He quoted Howell as commenting that “the character of Perdita interests me very much because it seems she has the graces of both ways of being brought up: she has the simplicity and honesty of the country and she also has a true sophistication of the town and education inbred in her. She and Hermione are the most balanced people in the play and it seems a play about balance, and about reconciliation.” Howell emphasized the importance of seasons in the play, saying that she began with winter, when emotions are the most exposed, then transitioned to spring (19). She thought that seasons are not that difficult to imply or depict on television; felt that a director should trust Shakespeare’s words and not try to replace them with props or special effects; and remarked that the set “had to be the same for the country and the court” but viewed and presented differently (20). Don Homfray, the set designer told Fenwick that “Jane felt that one of the themes of the play is that life is always the same and that it depends on how you open yourself to it, what you do to it, that makes you see it differently. The landscape of life, if you like, is seen in a certain way; but if a different action is taken, a different choice is made, then the landscape changes. So we felt that the set should always be the same place but always seen slightly differently,” so that at the end, the production emphasized the movement from light to darkness (21). John Peacock, the costume designer, said that the costumes were inspired by Botticelli, Bruegel, van Eyck, and others and that Leontes and Polixines “change places” by the end in the ways they are dressed. He described how Hermione was disguised as a sculpture and said that the costumes reflect the early seventeenth century (22). Howell, returning to the discussion and saying that she saw the bear as a symbolic extension of Leontes, who himself is dressed in furs, also remarked that she emphasizes the importance of the actors (23) but also thinks the plot and Shakespeare’s words are even more important than the actors, who are there to serve the plot (24). She saw the sudden jealousy of Leontes as typical of the way humans in the world are often irrational (24–25), while Anna Calder-Marshall, who played Hermione, said that she tried to imply in the opening scene that her marriage to Leontes had been a long and happy one and that his sudden jealousy completely mystified her. Jeremy Kemp, playing Leontes, said: “I think in the last group of plays Shakespeare was getting impatient with the mechanics of plot and he wanted to get launched into this story of a jealous man” as quickly as possible. Kemp considered Leontes “not a very secure chap. You have to remember that he comes out of it just as suddenly—and that perhaps is a greater problem for an actor than getting into it” (25). Kemp considered the last scene the hardest: “Leontes is given a second chance. He himself is, in a manner of speaking, brought back from stone. … He was constantly reminded of [Hermione] by Paulina; she was still very much alive in his head” (26). Calder-Marshall described the difficulty of playing the statue scene; her first impulse was to cry when she first saw her daughter; but her second impulse was that she should not cry because doing so would upset her daughter (26–27). Howell herself, in some of the final remarks Fenwick recorded, said, “I believe in Resurrection and regrowth—not necessarily in a Christian sense, but I do believe in a cyclic thing, in the right to have second chances. And the health that comes to us through our children. Everyone has the right to a second chance and can take that right. That regenerative thing in the play kept me going. I find it the most satisfying of plays, I mean deeply, on a spiritual level, very rewarding.” Stressing the need for audiences to pay close attention to every single one of Shakespeare’s words since the words are the essence of a Shakespeare play, she said that she strives for clarity in her productions (27).
J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their pioneering 1988 critical anthology Shakespeare on Television, quoted from and/or reported on the earliest reviews. One, in the London Times, faulted the production’s pace and sets, commended the three lead actors, while another, in the Washington Post found the “scanty, semi-abstract scenery appropriate for a story whose true location is never-never land,” noting that closeups were frequently featured and praising Jeremy kemp’s credibly jealous Leontes. A writer for the New York Times considered this one of the best of the BBC productions, praising the clarity of the language, the “solid, at times superb performances,” and broadcast’s overall result of “delightful surprise.” A reviewer for an academic journal noted the symbolism of Leonte’s bear-like fur coat, praised the acting, and reported that there was “little attempt to age the characters between the first and second half.” Another academic, writing for London’s Times Literary Supplement, thought that the “set’s limitations … deny the romantic liberties of the tale” and said that “televising the play resulted in reducing perspective, diminishing stature,” and inhibiting rhetoric. This reviewer remarked that “Jeremy Kemp’s Leontes, introverted, properly humourless, seems understated. His anguished utterances need air. He avoids embarrassment but sacrifices range. He contrasts with Robert Stephens’s Polixenes, never dull, but mannered, visually and vocally, with no respect for the pentameter line.” However, this reviewer did praise the performances of Margaret Tyzack, Cyril Luckham, Arthur Hewlett, Debbie Farrington, and George Howe (276). Jane Howell’s direction was called “sensible and fluent” but the play was judged to be “smaller, flatter [on television] than in the theatre. There is less sense of interaction among the characters, and so less comedy, less drama. … Though the statue scene is moving, the focus on individuals denies us the sense of simultaneous involvement.” In short, “The approach is intelligent and honest, the acting accomplished, but the medium has reduced the message” (277). A review in the Shakespeare Quarterly, also quoted by Bulman and Coursen, observed that “Ms. Howell has encoded ‘things dying’ and ‘things reborn’ in contrasts of stark white and subtle greens and pinks”; reported that the set was “non-representational in rendering this tragicomedy as a dream play set against a symbolic world of pyramids and cones”; thought this Leontes confirmed feminists’ worst suspicions about men; and found the heavy costumes strangely at odds with an southern Italian setting. Jeremy Kemp’s Leontes was called “very understated,” and the reviewer wrote that he sometimes “would have liked to see the camera pull back so that from a suitable distance I could behold Leontes properly rave and rant. Like Titus and Lear, he should fly off the handle” (277).
Donald Hedrick, reviewing this production for the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, called the adaptation “too tame” and the bear “embarrassing” and “shabbily costumed” in a fashion “inappropriate for realistic or fantastic style.” He thought the production’s “good sense” resulted in “timidity” and “restraint,” albeit also in “elegance and clarity.” Describing the setting as “visually bare” and the acting “crisp and restrained, with additions of delivery and gesture and blocking that are intelligent and studied,” he nonetheless mostly found that “the actors, like the bear, have too little to do (the opposite of so much busy contemporary theatre). Too many lines are merely intoned reverentially” (4). He concluded: “For all its elegance, this gentle production manages to inspire an irreverent reverie: for a wild bear director to be suddenly let loose on the set, running amok” (6).
In her 1991 book on the BBC series, Susan Willis wrote that “Winter’s Tale was the start of [director Jane] Howell’s experience with the Shakespeare series, and of all her productions it has the most highly strung cast and the most abstract set” (167), with an emphasis on “seasonal changes” (168). According to Willis, “the actors often seem aware of the camera and engage with it” (169).
Ros King, in her 2009 handbook on the play (142–43) described the BBC set; noted that characters are often shown walking toward the camera from a long distance (142); said that Leontes often speaks directly to the camera; remarked that the film powerfully presents a “cold, controlled society” lacking privacy; and observed how the set slightly changes in the second half (143).
Writing in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (344–46), Peter Cochran found this production disappointing because of the nondescript set (344); mocked other settings; faulted the bear (345); called this version “half-baked”; but did term the actors “excellent” (346).
In an essay from 2017 titled “The Winter’s Tale: Comparing the Polish Television Theatre and the BBC Versions,” Jacek Fabiszak, comparing and contrasting the BBC version of The Winter’s Tale with an earlier television version broadcast in Poland, noted the challenges presented by television productions and the differing views of various critics about those challenges. He described producer Jonathan Miller’s approach to the BBC series and the freedom he gave to Jane Howell when she directed The Winter’s Tale (94–96). Fabiszak listed various similarities between the BBC and Polish productions, saying that both avoided being mere filmed versions of theatrical stagings, that both used comparably unrealistic sets, and that both sets emphasized artifice (98–100). He reported that the productions differed in the extent to which they emphasized color, with Howell greatly emphasizing it both in the sets and the costumes she employed (100–101). Writing that both directors avoided spectacular acting, instead focusing on “the power of words” (101) and that both productions allowed actors to address the camera directly (102–3), he also reported that both women directors gave great attention to the play’s female characters (103–4). His essay closed with a final assessment of each director’s strengths (104).