The Royal Ballet, The Winter's Tale Review ★★★★★

The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s late plays and by common consent not one of his best, with a weak structure and convoluted plot. But in the hands of Christopher Wheeldon, surely one of the most inspired choreographers working today, and his team it’s become a delightful full-evening ballet, with deeply engaging characters, a coherent and involving storyline, truly dazzling visuals and a vibrant musical score. In short, a classic.

A Royal Ballet commission, it premiered 10 years ago and has been reprised a couple times since, but hadn’t returned to the Covent Garden stage since 2018. Now it’s back with four mostly brand new casts eagerly claiming the limelight.

On opening night César Corrales put in an muscular performance in his debut as Leontes, the King of Sicily, whose pathological jealousy and unfounded belief that the baby his wife Hermione is carrying has been fathered by his friend Polixenes, King of Bohemia, unleashes the tragedy of Act I.

The Royal Ballet, The Winter's Tale, Calvin Richardson, Lauren Cuthberstion and César Corrales © 2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski
Corrales fully inhabited the dark anguish and fury of Wheeldon’s choreography, where classical steps take on expressionist distortion, a man in thrall to an inner turmoil that all too easily turns to violence.

Lauren Cuthbertson reprised the role of Hermione, originally created on her. With her faultless elegant technique, she was the epitome of innocence wronged, and in Act III (pictured top) of the gentle forgiveness that brings about Leontes’s redemption.

Calvin Richardson debuted as Polixenes, a vigorous performance as the breezy antithesis of the broody Leontes, which will surely develop in further outings.

Act II is set 16-years later in the countryside of sunlit, jolly Bohemia, where the baby daughter Leontes ordered disappeared was instead abandoned and found by a shepherd who raised her and called her Perdita. Danced by Francesca Hayward, she is in love with Florizel, Polixenes’s son (Marcelino Sambé), who’s pretending to be a peasant.Their exuberant young love flourishes under possibly the most glorious theatrical tree ever created.

The Royal Ballet, The Winter's Tale, Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé © 2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski
Two secondary characters stood out in this cast: the tremendously eloquent Melissa Hamilton as Paulina, the Head of Queen Hermione’s Household, a warm, steadying presence, who proves central to plot development; and young Marco Masciari, as the irrepressible son of Perdita’s rescuer, who danced with impressive technique and brilliant flair. He is sure to go far in a company he joined only four years ago, as a Prix de Lausanne prize winner.

Joby Talbot’s score tells the story with great verve and inventiveness. Bob Crowley’s designs are superlatively versatile and range from the broody interiors of Leontes’s palace in Act I to the sunny, colourful and carefree atmosphere of Act II Bohemia (and that tree!). In Act III, back in Sicily, Crowley gradually transports the action from the dark interiors to a bright, open setting where repentance and forgiveness come together, helped by Natasha Katz’s always intelligent and atmospheric lighting. Daniel Brodie’s projections bring an element of wonder and magic to an enthralling evening.