Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

With the Seattle Shakespeare Company's productions, it seems as if they're always hit or miss. Their current season has contained some of each, and the current play, The Winter's Tale, is a mixed bag. In this case, the set design and art direction is plain ol' lovely, while the acting leaves a bit to be desired.

As a whole, the play is a rumination on the varied potential of love. The first half concerns love's destructive effects: the King of Sicily becomes convinced that his Queen is cuckolding him with their good friend, the King of Bohemia (think Othello without the race relations), which destroys the friendship as well as the family. Then the second half focuses on love's potential to heal, when the King of Sicily's abandoned daughter, having been adopted by some Bohemian shepherds, starts hooking up with the Prince of Bohemia. Way to land a breadwinner, honey.

There's not so much by way of acting. The cast runs the gamut from hammy scenery-chewing to sounding as if they're reading the iambic pentameter without understanding the meaning of the words. We did like Troy Fischnaller and Joseph P. McCarthy as the clownish adoptive shepherds---the latter of which sounded, but didn't resemble Harvey Keitel; meanwhile Troy Miszklevitz, as the trickster Autolycus, totally looks like a young House.

However, the star of this show is really the sparse, Asian-inspired sets and the "special effects." There's the creative way they indicate travel by boat (both the boat and the waves are acted out by the actors), and of course there's The Bear, which assembles in a Voltron-like fashion to attack Antigonus at the end of the first act. If nothing else, you must see that. A Winter's Tale is now in its final weekend, so go for The Bear and stay for the scenery.

Center House Theatre at Seattle Center
Friday 7:30pm, Saturday 7:30pm/10:30pm, Sunday 2pm
$16-32