STAGE REVIEWS : ‘WINTER’S TALE’ AT HOME IN THEATRICUM BOTANICUM

The outdoor Theatricum Botanicum, nestled in the woods of Topanga Canyon, is such an appropriate setting for “Winter’s Tale,” with its flowers, its folk songs and mead, that Shakespeare’s bucolic atmosphere can seldom have looked sweeter.

Director Ellen Geer (who handsomely essays the role of the wrongly scorned queen, Hermione) takes a play that ranges all over place and time and briskly marshals events into a comprehensible two-hour afternoon, including intermission. Acoustics in the tiered half-bowl of a theater are excellent, and Shakespeare’s theme of separation and homecoming flourishes well enough.

This was Shakespeare’s second-to-last play, and it looks backward to his attraction to rustics, feasts, oracles and beggars in disguise. It’s also a play about parents and children and, at least in the first act, jealousy. Actor Hubert Kelly’s fit of jealous rage as Hermione’s royal husband, Leontes, underscores Shakespeare’s instinctive sense of human psychosis (anticipating Freud). Kelly’s vocal and physical anger convey panther-like danger.

The surprise of the production is Alan Blumenfeld’s cutpurse peddler, Autolycus, whose feigning and roistering and sheer squatty bulk light up the forest. Herta Ware (wife of the late Will Geer, who created the Botanicum) lends a measure of loquacious crackle, and Anne Reghi’s costumes exuberantly blend into the countryside.

Performances at 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, at 3 p.m. Sundays, through Aug. 24.