Kenneth Branagh in 'The Winter's Tale'

A winter's tale is what parents tell children around a fireside, with details that should not be taken too seriously. Still and all, why must the protagonist be such a shit?

Why’d he do that?

The central action is both unmotivated and disagreeable — it’s downright creepy, in fact. Leontes, the king of Sicily (Kenneth Branagh), unreasonably decides that his pregnant wife, Hermione (Miranda Raison), has been unfaithful to him with the visiting king of Bohemia, Polixenes. Unlike Othello, no evidence is presented, not even false evidence. When members of his entourage tell him that he’s mistaken, Leontes turns against them, banishing some and threatening death to others. When the queen delivers a baby girl, Leontes calls the infant a bastard.

He tells a servant to take the babe to a distant, deserted area and dump her. He orders another servant to murder the king of Bohemia. He puts his wife on trial and asks the Delphic oracle to judge her. When the oracle pronounces her innocent, Leontes overrules that verdict and banishes her. The king and the audience are informed that the queen has died and so has his beloved young son. Both of those dramatic events occur offstage, without description or explantion. We assume that broken hearts were involved.

The Shakespeare we love

Then the story flashes forward 16 years. Now we see the Shakespeare we love. A commentator known as Time (played by Judi Dench at the age of 80) lovingly describes the passage of years. Dench doubles as Paulina, a noblewoman of Sicily who was steadfast in her defense of Hermione.

We are in the happy land of Bohemia with singing and dancing and featured turns by a musician, a clown, a kindly old shepherd, and an adorable young couple. The lovers are Florizel, the son of the Bohemian king, and Perdita who is — wouldn’t you know? — Leontes’s daughter. Searching for sheep 16 years previously, the shepherd had come upon the baby, whom he raised as his own.

Perdita is a sweet and plain-spoken lass (played by Jessie Buckley with a slight Scottish accent), the most appealing character on the stage. There’s conflict between Florizel and his father because the son lied to his dad and because Perdita is a commoner, but everything is patched up and the play concludes with a joyous reunion back in Sicily between Perdita and her father.

Now comes the scene that lifts this play above the ordinary. Paulina takes Leontes to see the memorial statue of his late wife and performs the "magic trick" of bringing her to life. But the real trick had been fooling Leontes into thinking she had died; Hermione has been alive all along, and now she poses as her own statue until a contrite Leontes kisses her fingers and she comes alive and forgives her husband.

Why’d she do that?

Considering those 16 years of loneliness, and justifiable anger over the death of their son and the apparent death of their daughter, why should Hermione forgive Leontes and take him back? No reasonable woman would do so. But this is a holiday entertainment, so it ends with everyone living happily ever after.

Branagh, who codirected, gives Leontes as fair a portrayal as anyone could, playing him as a tortured soul who doubles over with pain when he thinks his wife is unfaithful. Branagh shows a weak man, terrified by his own suspicions. As always, Branagh’s speech is clearly enunciated in an appealingly natural manner.

In addition to the radiant Dench and Buckley and the others named above, the production has excellent characterizations by John Shrapnel as the loyal aide Camillo, Hadley Fraser as Polixenes, Tom Bateman as his handsome son, and Jimmy Yuill as the Old Shepherd.