NOW IS THE WINTER
OF OUR CONTENT

Shakespeare’s unruly tragicomedy
gets a splendid Central Park outing
powered by a remarkable cast

Do not surrender to the city heat: after the opening production of Romeo & Juliet, The Public Theater returns to Central Park with The Winter’s Tale, the second offering of this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park season, and you should not miss it. At the Delacorte Theater, director Daniel Sullivan and a brilliant cast serve up a delicious cocktail of irrational jealousy, paranoia, tyrannical tantrums, bucolic escapades, and miraculous reunions beneath the New York summer night sky.

We begin in Sicilia with two lifelong friends, two kings, enjoying a happy reunion that has lasted several months. Now the guest must return home, and everyone is sad to see him leave. It takes Shakespeare what feels like five minutes to ruin the joyful mood: one of them suddenly becomes convinced that his wife and his best friend are having an affair. Does he have evidence? No, just vibes. And does anyone’s good advice get through to him? Not a chance; he is the monarch, and he holds all the power.

Raúl Esparza’s Leontes, King of Sicilia, begins as a flawlessly charming and respectable man, a loving husband, but he convinces himself that his wife Hermione (Lily Rabe) and Bohemia’s King Polixenes (Gilbert Owuor) are lovers, interpreting every sign of affection between the two as proof. Esparza is outstanding in the role, capturing the pain of paranoia, the torture of doubt, and the absurdity of the breakdown that follows with precisely the right intensity. His voice and body seem to register every turn of the escalating madness.

Rabe’s Hermione is grace under pressure incarnate, and the actress is superb. Faced with false accusations, imprisonment, and a sham trial while pregnant, she maintains such regal composure that everyone around her begins to look like peasants. Beneath the majesty is something warmer: from the beginning, Rabe gives her character a magnificent combination of steel and softness, even when Leontes forces her to give birth in jail. Dion (Matt E. Russell) and Cleomenes (Alex Hernandez) make the long trip to Greece to consult Apollo’s Oracle, only to return with the celestial equivalent of “Hermione is innocent, you fool,” but apparently even the gods can’t talk Leontes out of his delusion.

Poor King Polixenes barely has time to finish saying his goodbyes when his bestie decides murdering him is the only logical next step. Fortunately, Camillo (funny, amiable Teagle F. Bougere) refuses to become an accomplice to the king’s nonsensical royal tantrums; he secretly hustles Polixenes out of town and onto a boat to his kingdom, Bohemia. Matthew Eby’s Mamillius is the royals’ eldest son, a sunny young prince whose warmth makes what happens to him all the more devastating, while Jennifer Mogbock’s Emilia is Hermione’s loyal friend, standing by her when everything falls apart.

Then there is fearless, sharp-tongued Paulina (powerful Marsha Stephanie Blake), who is completely unimpressed by the king’s madness, telling him exactly what everyone else is thinking. Strangely, she doesn’t get punished for her audacity, but her husband Antigonus (Steven Skybell) gets stuck with one of Shakespeare’s worst assignments: abandoning baby Perdita, Hermione and Leontes’ newborn, on a distant shore. He obeys with visible reluctance, inadvertently setting into motion the play’s second act of miracles, coincidences, and one famously hungry bear scene that the director downplays.

Sixteen years later, the mood shifts dramatically from royal tragedy to pastoral rom-com. Chuck Cooper’s big-hearted Old Shepherd unwittingly becomes the monarchy’s rescuer for having saved Perdita while Michael Khalid Karadsheh, as his endearing son and Perdita’s adoptive “brother,” barrels through the action with enough comic exuberance to chase away the heartbreak we witness before the intermission. Katie Griffith’s Mopsa joins the sheep-shearing festivities where romance blooms, and Skybell returns as Autolycus, a charming peddler and pickpocket whose larger-than-life performance occasionally tips into overkill.

Peter Douskalis (laouto), Laura Masferrer (cello), Hiroko Taguchi (violin), and Paul Staroba (keyboard and conductor) supply the music for the bucolic party, while skilled ensemble members Violeta Picayo, Denise Kolodja, Michael Thanh Tran, Everett Lonergan, Heschel Bay, Aubie Merrylees, Bianca Rogoff, and Jackson Whitman work hard to fill the set with lords, ladies, shepherds, servants, villagers, and assorted bystanders who spend their time reacting to the increasingly unbelievable chain of events, including the fact that Florizel (Daniel Kyri), son of King Polixenes, has fallen in love with Perdita (Isabela Ferrer), unaware that the young woman he intends to marry is actually the daughter of Leontes and Hermione.

The Bohemian interlude has all the charm of a country postcard but, dramatically speaking, feels like Shakespeare’s halftime show. That is a quirk of the play rather than a failing of this production, which rebounds magnificently in the finale. Rabe as Hermione’s statue achieves such exquisite stillness that her eventual slow return to life feels like magic. Opposite her, Esparza plays Leontes as a man hollowed out by his own cruelty, making his hard-won redemption all the more moving.

Scenic design by Maruti Evans is as eye-catching and nonsensical as the play itself. The King of Sicilia, curiously enough, does not live in Palermo or anywhere remotely near the Mediterranean Sea, but in a wintry landscape framed by three ornate, classicist white doorways and stark, leafless trees rooted directly into the stage. Behind the doors, fabric-draped mounds suggest snow-covered fields. Mount Etna in January, perhaps? The geography gets even more inventive in the second half: Bohemia, a cold historical region in Central Europe, becomes a gloriously sunny destination, complete with flower-filled fields and seemingly effortless access by boat. It is a geography test only Shakespeare could pass. A dramatic circular platform painted as an antique clock face with Roman numerals provides a brilliant central motif of time.

The open-back setup incorporates Central Park’s natural tree canopy and the distant illuminated stone facade of Belvedere Castle, expanding the visual scale of the stage because the production’s design is every bit as thoughtful as its performances. Bradley King uses precise lighting cuts to sculpt the stage whenever possible, isolating characters in pools of light and letting shadows swallow them when necessary. Linda Cho’s costumes straddle tradition and allegory, with Tom Watson’s hair and wigs adding another layer of period detail. Brian Ronan’s sound design and Tom Kitt’s music complete the picture, ensuring, with the rest of the creative team, that nothing distracts from the remarkable cast.

The Winter’s Tale is Shakespeare’s everything salad, tossed with nearly all his favorite ingredients: royal tyranny and psychological ruin; unfounded jealousy seasoned with male paranoia; innocent souls crushed under the weight of other people’s madness; families divided by oceans and tragedy; daughters who grow up unaware of their own identities; decadent courts giving way to idyllic pastoral worlds; and apparent death followed by miraculous return. But it offers three very useful lessons. First, believe in democracy and think twice before handing absolute power to anybody. Second, never accuse anyone without evidence, and perhaps listen to the people giving you sensible advice. Third, when a Shakespeare play starts making perfect sense, brace yourself. Don’t miss it.

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photos by Joan Marcus

The Winter’s Tale
The Public Theater / Free Shakespeare in the Park
Delacorte Theater, Central Park in New York City
3 hours, 20 minutes with intermission
Tue–Sun at 8
ends on August 22, 2026
free; tickets subject to availability
for tickets, visit The Public Theater

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