Winter's Tale at Independent Shakespeare Co

Cheek by Jowl, the English company founded in 1981 by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, returns for the third time to the Piccolo Teatro di Milano with a grand international coproduction. After the captivating Cymbeline and the jaundiced Macbeth presented at the Piccolo – in 2007 and 2010 respectively – by the most international of English directors who, as the Guardian wrote, breathes new life into the classics, the fascinating ensemble honours – for the 2016 season – the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare with a staging of Winter’s Tale. Acclaimed worldwide, Donnellan has won the Laurence Olivier Award, the most coveted English theatrical award, three times. With its tours the company has visited more than 380 cities and 50 countries in six continents. Donnellan and Ormerod previously staged Winter’s Tale for the Maly Drama Theatre of Saint Petersburg in 1997, a production which received the prestigious Golden Mask Award.

“One of the most important of Shakespeare’s works – explains Donnellan - Winter’s Tale, despite having been written in the same period as The Tempest, breaks all of the rules that The Tempest, on the contrary, follows. Units of time, location and action… are put to one side, while we wander from court to nation, from the heights of tragedy to the depths of comedy, over a period of fourteen years. Winter’s Tale tells of a delirious and paranoid king who dismembers his own family. But this is the new Shakespeare, after he had finished the great tragedies and the tough fight for redemption he produced glimmers of hope. The initial darkness gives way to joy, as Time leads the characters to an overwhelming conclusion…”.