Women-Only ‘Winter’s Tale’

Rambling, hard to follow and torn by jagged time lapses and shifts of tone, “The Winter’s Tale” is notoriously difficult to pull off under any circumstances. Tackling it with an all-female cast is a more daunting challenge than the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company has faced with previous stagings of the Bard’s better-known works.

Still, proving women capable in any role is the company’s charter mission, and this plucky multicultural rendition at the 24th Street Theatre scores some considerable successes with Shakespeare’s penultimate play, a meditation on the sickness and rebirth of the human soul.

Lisa Wolpe sets immediate high standards with a masterful performance of Leontes, the Sicilian monarch driven by sudden jealous rage to destroy his loving wife (Kimberleigh Aarn). Unlike Othello, Leontes is not the victim of an evildoer’s manipulation, but rather overtaken by some inner, all-consuming darkness. As in many other portrayals, the reasons remain opaque, but Wolpe makes utterly credible both the king’s cruelty and his subsequent remorse once the veil of madness has lifted.

The show also sports notably fine performances in Veralyn Jones’ embodiment of nobility as the healing Paulina, and show-stealer (and John Waters film veteran) Mink Stole’s camp-free second-act clowning as the wheeler-dealer Autolycus. However, not all the male characters are handled as adeptly, and the conceit strains at times.

Framed in Elina Katsioula’s breathtakingly expansive scenic design, Daniela Varon’s smart staging wrestles coherence from the unwieldy text with judicious trims, and delights with a lovely ballet on the passage of time (choreographed by Sarah Hickler, with music by O-lan Jones) that elegantly fills in the story’s awkward 16-year gap.

*

“The Winter’s Tale,” 24th Street Theatre, 1117 24th St., L.A. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Oct. 28. $15-$20. (310) 289-2120. Running time: 3 hours, 5 minutes.