Some shows are so wrong, they’re inad vertently entertaining. Others are just not right: The actors, director and designers do their own thing as if unaware of what their colleagues are up to.
The result is the kind of boring banality that makes you wonder, “Couldn’t I be doing something more fun right now, like the laundry?”
Unfortunately, “The Winter’s Tale” falls into that camp.
This Shakespeare in the Park production, which alternates with the far superior “The Merchant of Venice,” features many of the same actors, except for the respective leads. In “Merchant,” they mostly shine; in “Tale,” they mostly flail about, seemingly unaware of who or what they’re meant to play.
Granted, “Tale” is a tricky, split-personality work that requires considerable skill. It starts off as a tragic story of devastating jealousy, then abruptly turns into a comedy infused with farce and
romance.
Director Sam Mendes negotiated those hairpin turns with uncommon grace at BAM last year, but here Michael Greif (“Next to Normal”)
is at sea.
The green-eyed monster has set its claws in the King of Sicilia, Leontes (Ruben Santiago-Hudson),
who is so convinced that his wife, Hermione (Linda Emond), is having an affair that he repudiates her. Both she and her new baby are left to perish.
That part of the evening is torpedoed by Santiago-Hudson, who doesn’t bring any insight to the role and seems to think memorizing the lines was enough. Rarely has a wrathful king looked and sounded so ineffectual.
The tone is much lighter in the second half, which takes place 16 years later. Hermione and her child actually survived, and the baby is now a babe (Heather Lind). Back with them is the marvelous Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Secrets & Lies”). As Paulina, the woman who saves the royal family, she gives the show’s single best performance, infusing her speeches with dignity and inner strength.
But most of the action is taken up by the farcical shenanigans of hick shepherds (Max Wright, Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and a con artist (Hamish Linklater).
Singing “the pale moon shines by night,” Linklater drops trou. It perfectly encapsulates a show that tries too hard and yet not hard enough.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com