RAIN OR SHINE: A WINTER'S TALE

Of course it should have been a balmy summer evening, the sun sinking slowly into a furnace of copper, chilled Pinot Grigio on the Castle terrace and a light zephyr breathing the warm balm of Sicilia over the assembled company. But that was asking too much.

We motored over last Saturday evening to Goodrich Castle, a lovely old pile in South Herefordshire, built of that peculiar purple-ish sandstone they go in for in those parts, for the specific purpose of getting a good soaking and incidentally to watch the Rain and Shine Theatre Company perform Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. As they say on the quiz shows: the clue is in the title.

Rain and Shine are an excellent troupe who perform Shakespeare and other classical plays in a rumbustious, burlesque, street theatre-ish style. Lots of noise, lots of clever and comic ‘business,’ deliberately hammy acting and audience involvement: on Saturday, the actors (well, two of them) fancying a drop of wine during the performance, simply helped themselves to the remains of someone’s picnic, for instance. Well worth seeing if you get the chance; more: well worth going an hour’s drive to see. Even in the rain. Even when the rain itself was over-acting, assisted by its fellow meteorological thesps: darkness and a half-gale.

I had never before seen The Winter's Tale, so this was a first for me, and, given the generally humid ambiance, not one I am likely to forget. I rather enjoyed it, I have to say - though it’s a curious piece, starting as it does as a serious tragedy all about how a man’s jealousy can ruin lives and marital harmony. But then, after King Leontes has caused his infant daughter (who he believes not to be his) to be abandoned far from the shores of his Kingdom of Sicilia, for which his faithful servant is then attacked by a bear so letting Shakespeare write his most famous stage direction ‘Exit pursued by a Bear,’ the play switches to comedy. Well, it has to really, otherwise the whole thing would become too silly, and the rest of the piece is a comedy with music, dance and song. Shakespeare as Lloyd Webber, you might say.

Leontes, even gets his beloved wife back whom, he cast into prison where she dies in the meantime of the false accusations hurled at her. Someone thoughtfully makes a life size statue of her, which then comes to life when Leontes takes responsibility for his terrible behaviour and she, dutifully and in a triumph of hope over experience, accepts him again as husband.

I did, I confess, as the rain started to descend in stair rods during the last half hour, wish that that final scene would quickly draw to a close so that we could all go home. "Yes, we know the statue is real!" I wanted to say, "so you can skip the gradual warming up bit." Warming up! Everyone was frozen. Hermione (the statue) I would have thought especially, standing stock still as she was in the rain soaked gale for half an hour with only a wispy tunic to protect her.

Camped on the wet grass I noticed we were sitting next to a seventeenth century mortar called Roaring Meg. A squat, tubby black thing resembling an iron toad. It had been cast locally when the Parliamentary commander besieging the Royalists of Goodrich in 1646 began to lose patience at their defiance. So with Meg’s helped he lobbed a few 200lb gunpowder filled shells into the castle and the walls, in true Biblical style, came tumbling down. Or so the notice said.

I couldn't help thinking, watching the droplets of rain swirling on the wind like snowflakes in the luminescence of the spotlights, that the play might even have been performed before, in this same castle courtyard or in the adjacent hall, in happier times, before Roaring Meg (why are cannons always female?) brought the great castle towers tumbling down.

I can't think of another country, other than Britain, where the company would be shown the same spirit - not only of 'The Show Must Go On' but also of 'The Show Must Be Watched.' Only when I started drying out did I discover how wet I was.

But as it ended and we stood to applaud the bravura of the cast and they applauded us in turn for our determination to stay to the end, and we packed up and waded back the long quarter mile in the muddy darkness to the car park, cold and soaked, I knew I was glad to have gone. There is more to theatre than ice cream in the warm trappings of the grand circle.