A Winter’s Tale – Youth Music Theatre UK – Rose Theatre, Kingston

A Winter’s Tale was performed by Youth Music Theatre UK at the Rose Theatre, Kingston.

There’s a lot of valiant hard work in this show, directed by Bronagh Lagan with Greg Arrowsmith as MD,  but the storytelling is far from clear (changing some actors in roles between acts doesn’t help) and in places it feels musically under-rehearsed.

The opening chorus, for example, was very ragged indeed at the performance I saw. Singers were neither together nor with the (good) five-piece band.

Nick Stimson’s book and Howard Goodall’s music and lyrics set their take on Shakespeare’s play in a 1980s-ish Soviet state called Inguria where Leon (Will Hopkins) is a president with jealousy problems, leading – of course – to the imprisonment of his wife Ekaterina and the abandonment of their infant daughter in a forest. Yes, it’s loosely A Winter’s Tale but also does its own thing.

Narratively it’s a good idea to make Leon a diabetic and for his son Maxim (Oliver Furze) to have inherited the condition because it provides a perfectly plausible reason for Maxim’s ailing.

Much less satisfactory in a modern-ish setting is the coming to life of the late Ekaterina’s statue – I honestly thought until the last few moments that it had been cut to be substituted with Maxim’s recovery from a diabetic coma which would make much better sense. As it is, it just seems like too much unlikely good news all at once.

Furze is outstanding as the bouncy, cheeky, then hurt, then sick little boy caught in the appalling falling out of his parents.

There’s also a delightful performance from Daniel Pugh – audience in the palm of his hand – as the gorblimey shepherd who finds the baby Perdita and sells some of her jewellery to buy himself a taverna and escape from “bloody sheep” except when he hosts the annual sheep shearing festival.

Inez Mazdon-Elas is a lovely Perdita – small, fresh-voiced and a fine singer – who works well with the much taller Alistair Oakley who is appealing as Luca, the Florizel role.

There are some enjoyable episodes in this show. The dance sequence in the beach resort is fun and the chorus work in the trial scene is impressively slick with pounding rhythms counterpointed against impassioned solo singing.

The sword dance routine at Leon’s party/reception is well choreographed (by Phyllida Crowley-Smith) and delivered by talented dancers in scarlet.

And I really liked the flexibility of Libby Todd’s set: four odd shaped “concrete” blocks which work together in lots of different configurations including beds, thrones, tables and much more.

Despite reservations about the overall success of this production I have to say that, as always, it’s a real pleasure to see young people enthusiastically working together, learning and growing in confidence which is what youth theatre is about.

Susan Elkin