A Winter’s Tale is a mixed bag

Even reading it, it's a play that starts out strong but falls apart at the halfway point. I've already questioned whether I want to sit through the production until 11:30 at night knowing how I feel about the play itself. I like its cast and director and part of me hopes they can make the case for it, but part of me doubts they can.

The noises you describe are just part of the live-theatre-in-the-park experience, with some nights being worse than others. Nothing you can do about that.

Honestly, I think it’s worth it for the first part. The second part is irredeemable. So you can go for the first half and leave after intermission.

The play is done straight, no audience participation except one little moment where there’s dancing on stage and one of the players gets the audience to start clapping to the beat. It’s a well directed, well performed show.


The up and down is from audience members who come and go as they please. This isn’t your local community theater Shakespeare in the park, we’re not sitting on blankets and they shouldn’t allow people to leave whenever they feel like it. Lock the doors

Updated On: 7/30/26 at 12:36 PM

Fred Mason said: "I thought it started off strong, the “first act” overall was quite good. Unfortunately it falls apart after intermission and has a completely ridiculous ending. The performances were pretty good all around. The entire show had audience membersconstantly up and down. This should be banned because it’s a huge distraction when people are constantly moving around. Plus there were airplanes and helicopters hovering above. And an ambulance siren outside. And the sound of people talkingin the park. It also started to rain for about 15 minutes and people really started to leave. Not pleasant. The show ran 3.5 hours."

Oh no, Flash! Not airplanes in the sky!!!!! Not ambulances taking people in medical need to hospitals!!!!!! Not people talking in a public park!!!!!!!! Not rain falling (gasp) outside!!!!!!! Halt all NYC flyovers during the show. Don’t allow ambulances and just let people die during the show. Lock gags in park goers mouths during the show. Sounds to me, Flash, like you should not attend anymore outdoor events, Flash. You are not mentally prepared to handle them.

I would still say the second half was well performed and directed, it’s just the writing feels so disconnected with the events of the first half. I don’t particularly care about the daughter and her adopted dad and her husband and his dad. After intermission, we only see Raul Esparza and Lily Rabe again at the tale end of the show in the final scene which doesn’t feel like a satisfying ending since it’s so abrupt. I’ve never read the play, I’m sure they probably cut things out.

He comes on stage on a wooden boat. There’s pieces of fabric upstage that look like sailcloth. There are thunder sound effects and it seems like he got caught in a storm before leaving the baby center stage. We don’t see a bear, it’s just described to us, which I was confused about because it looked like he was in the middle of water. The man who adopts her comes on stage and finds the baby, then intermission.

The Winter's Tale ranks pretty low for me amongst Shakespeare's plays and this rather straight-forward and workmanlike production certainly provided nothing to get me to even consider revising my opinion.

The play is a mishmash of Shakespearean tropes, all of them done more effectively in better plays, and Sullivan's very self-serious staging here often works against the production. The audience is always so far ahead of the plot that the characters' overwrought reactions to its contrivances sometimes play as unintentional comedy. It doesn't help that the pacing is glacial: we got out at 11:30 last night and the first act is nearly two hours. Some streamlining of the text would really go a long way; it is hard to stay invested when you're watching the creaky gears of a very thin plot slowly turn. This is not a text that is as rich as the bard's best and Sullivan does very little to grease the wheels or compensate for its major weaknesses.

The cast is mostly serviceable. Marsha Stephanie Blake is the standout with her fiery Paulina- her confrontation of Leontes easily drew the biggest reaction from the audience. It's great to see Lily Rabe back at the Delacorte and she brings out the most one can from Hermione, a fairly two-dimensional character. Raul Esparza brings his charismatic intensity to Leontes, but it is really hard to buy his paranoid, destructive jealousy when there is absolutely no chemistry between Rabe and Gilbert Owuor's rather bland Polixenes and Sullivan's staging gives them very little in the way of physical intimacy that could be misinterpreted- it makes Leontes go from having a tragic flaw to just seeming insane.

It's fun seeing Steven Skybell play a rogue after being best known for playing mensches but Autolycus is a lot of pushed humor that does not land much of the time. There isn't a lot of successful comedy in this production; Michael Khalid Karadsheh as the young shepherd is pretty much the only comedic relief that works.

The scenic design is sparse: 3 moving doors and some bare trees for Leontes' court and a pastoral garden for Bohemia. The bear is a quickly appearing shadow (that whole sequence, already a staging challenge, plays out like everybody was just desperate to get it over with and move on). The play's other infamous moment, the inexplicably magical finale, is far more effective.

All in all, I can't say this is a must-see addition to the Delacorte's history and if you aren't a fan of The Winter's Tale, i truly cannot think this will convert you. These extremely wonky lesser works need more finessing to get them to take flight and Sullivan just doesn't do that here. However, I think Shakespeare in the Park is always worthwhile to attend because of its unique atmosphere and feeling of community and that magic is present even when a production itself is mediocre. At one point in the first act, a big, majestic heron flew low over the stage as Lily Rabe was speaking to the awed gasps of the audience. If only the production could have captured even a little of that natural magic.

Updated On: 8/1/26 at 01:31 PM

I am pretty sure Shakespeare co-wrote The Winter’s Tale with another playwright. Act IV in the very least must have been written by someone else because it’s like a totally different play all of the sudden. We know he co-wrote several other plays (his worst ones, interestingly). I like Winter’s Tale but if they are doing the whole thing uncut (3.5 hours???) that’s crazy.

What time are people lining up for this one?