STAGE REVIEW : ‘The Winter’s Tale’ Finds Refuge With New Company

“A New Theatre With Old Friends” reads the banner headline on the brochure for Shakespeare Orange County and that’s nothing but the truth. Thomas Bradac, who resigned last year as artistic director of the Grove Shakespeare, has regrouped and started another Shakespearean company on the Chapman College campus of this sleepy town, taking with him some of the finest actors who appeared at the Grove.

Many were on the stage of the Waltmar Theatre at Friday’s opening of Shakespeare Orange County’s inaugural show: “The Winter’s Tale.” A winter’s tale at the height of a muggy summer? Well, an autumnal tale with a happy ending. “Tale” is the fruit of Shakespeare’s more reflective years, a moody story of betrayal, injustice, separation, forgiveness and reunion as improbable as magic, which it abundantly requires.

But the only magic here is that Bradac has been able to found a new Shakespearean company at a time when so many theaters are going under. This first production, directed by John-Frederick Jones, creaks with predictability and facile takes on character, especially the comic ones.

As plays go, it is a brooding comedy in which a paranoid King (Leontes of Sicilia, played by Carl Reggiardo), suspecting his pregnant wife Hermione (Kamella Tate) of adultery with his friend Polixenes, King of Bohemia (Wayne Alexander), throws her in jail and arranges to have the newborn baby killed.

When Hermione dies from shock and Leontes starts to see the error of his ways, it is too late.

Or is it? As in all fairy tales, things go awry to create miracles. Sixteen years pass. The child, which was abandoned in Bohemia, has been rescued and adopted by a shepherd who has named her Perdita (Melanie van Betten), the “lost one.” Polixenes’ son, the young prince Florizel (Charles Cook), falls in love with her and will do anything to make this country girl his bride.

In a finale as unlikely as it is tender, Perdita’s identity is revealed, Leontes and Polixenes rejoice their children’s forthcoming union and, thanks to the interventions of her good friend Paulina (Elizabeth Norment), Hermione is not as dead as she once seemed.

The production is elegantly costumed by Lyndall Otto, has a courtly musical spine by Chuck Estes and a functional unit set by E. Scott Shaffer. Yet its tone is curiously dour, a condition not helped Friday by the theater’s acoustics and a tendency by the actors to race through their lines or speak them to the floor.

The clearest performances come from Daniel Bryan Cartmell as the faithful court retainer Camillo, and from Norment, an actress with abundant inner subtleties and riches, who deploys them all as the loyal Paulina--a woman who, having suffered her share of tragedy, never wavers in her indignation at injustice or despairs that she’ll set things to right.

Alexander’s Polixenes is never much more than a figurehead even as written, but Reggiardo’s plotting and ruminations as Leontes are too consistently low-key and become wearing (where is the energy he demonstrated last year as Petruchio?). And despite an intelligent, delicately playful performance as the upright Hermione, even Tate is hard to follow, too often delivering her lines in a rush as if compelled to counteract the gloom.

Given these actors’ proven abilities, the problems would seem to rest in the director’s lap. The weakness of the supporting cast and the self-indulgence of the clowns in particular, reinforce this view. Michael Nehring’s knavish Autolycus and Joseph Foss’ dimwitted shepherd’s son are more irritating than amusing because of the lengths to which they go to make sure we know we’re supposed to be having fun.

It’s as if everyone in the supporting company had been told to overemphasize the action--a dead giveaway of unseasoned acting. The exception is van Betten, whose Perdita seems perpetually to hold back and who never develops a sexual chemistry with the bland Florizel. Even the play’s final scenes of reconciliation give us not mirth but its studied facsimile.

Why this is so may be no more than the fine tuning of a new company in a new environment. But it is disappointing, because the play, for all of its reliance on improbability, is endowed with a great humanity unfelt this time.

Carl Reggiardo: Leontes

Eric Priestly: Mamillius

Daniel Bryan Cartmell: Camillo

Michael Nehring: Antigonus/Autolycus

Wayne Alexander: Polixenes

Charles Cook: Florizel

Steve McCue: Old Shepherd

Joseph Foss: His Son

Kamella Tate: Hermione

Melanie van Betten: Perdita

Elizabeth Norment: Paulina

Cheryl Crabtree: Emilia/Dorcas

Faith LaVon: Mopsa

Producing director Thomas F. Bradac. Director John-Frederick Jones. Sets E. Scott Shaffer. Lights David C. Palmer. Costumes Lyndall Otto. Sound Craig Brown. Composer Chuck Estes. Choreographer Linda Kostlik. Hair styles Karen Juneman. Stage manager Nancy A. Petrella.