✭✭✭✭✭

choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, music by Joby Talbot

National Ballet of Canada & The Royal Ballet, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

November 14-21, 2025

Florizel: “When you do dance, I wish you


A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do


Nothing but that, move still, still so,


And own no other function”

Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale is one of the best ever balletic adaptations of a play by Shakespeare. The play from 1611, staged earlier this year at the Stratford Festival, is certainly not the best known play by the Bard, but its linking of the themes of love and death with the theme of the nature of art has made it increasingly popular from the mid-20th-century on. Wheeldon, already known to Toronto audiences for his fantastically imaginative ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2011), gives us in The Winter’s Tale a ballet that is both insightful and profound. On opening night, the National Ballet of Canada presented it in a flawless performance.

Having seen nine different productions of Shakespeare’s play, and having taught it numerous times, my main interest in seeing Wheeldon’s ballet was to see how he translated the Shakespeare’s words and ideas into movement. In the first scene of the play Shakespeare establishes through a conversation between two courtiers that Leontes, King of Sicilia, and Polixenes, King of Bohemia, have been inseparable friends since childhood. Where Shakespeare speaks, Wheeldon shows. He begins with a Prologue in which we see young male dancers representing Leontes and Polixenes as children playing. Soon the adult Leontes (Ben Rudisin) in green stands behind the boy in green and the adult Polixenes (Donald Thom) in red stands behind the boy in red. The adult kings channel aggression into play by holding each other’s forearms and alternately swinging each other off their feet.

In the Prologue Wheeldon introduces a symbol not present in Shakespeare that has an important function throughout the ballet. Here Leontes gives his beloved Hermione (Isabella Kinch) an emerald on a ribbon that he places around her neck. It is a sign of her rank and his love for her.

Act 1 begins in Sicilia where Bob Crowley has conceived the background and large set pieces in grey. The mid-calf-length costumes for men and women are in solid colours, severe kurta-like coats for the men and unadorned midi dresses for the women. Here Polixenes visiting Sicilia is already saying his goodbyes and he and Leontes repeat the signature dance of their youth. Leontes begs Polixenes to stay. But he will not. Leontes asks his wife Hermione to ask Polixenes to stay. And Polixenes agrees.

This should be good news, but Rudisin’s facial expression shifts from pleasure to doubt. In Shakespeare only Polixenes and a few courtiers visit Sicilia, but Wheeldon has an entire troop of Bohemians with Polixenes in Sicilia and they begin a celebratory dance. Crowley gives the Bohemians costumes completely unlike those of the Sicilians. Both sexes wear multi-hued, multi-layered outfits. The men wear short skirts over knee-britches with peasant blouses and jerkins. The women wear multiple knee-length ruffled skirts and peasant blouses. While Wheeldon gave the Sicilians stately, restrained dances, he gives the Bohemians bold, round-dances with hands waving wildly at the wrists.

When Hermione joins in one of these dances, Leontes looks on with increasing displeasure. A drumbeat like thunder marks Leontes sudden shift into madness when he accuses Hermione of unfaithfulness with Polixenes. In his mind, signalled by a green glow from lighting designer Natasha Katz, Leontes imagines Hermione and Polixenes flirting among the statues so prominent in Sicilia. Wheeldon thus takes Leontes’ suspicions from Leontes’ speeches in Shakespeare and shows us what plays out in Leontes’ crazed mind. Wheeldon portrays Leontes’ madness with much reference to spiders. He has Leontes’ posture become angular and steps small and jagged, Leontes’ hands creep up his arms like spiders and other times Leontes, on the ground, struggles as if caught in a web (we might say the web his own mind has woven). His most repeated move is a 90º developpé devant as if he had made his entire body into a weapon.

After the quick departure of the Bohemians, the mood in Sicilia only grows worse. Leontes accuses Hermione of being pregnant with Polixenes’ child and jails her where she gives birth to a daughter, Perdita. After this Leontes puts Hermione on trial. In Shakespeare we only hear that Mamillius, the son of Leontes and Hermione, has died. Wheeldon, however, has Mamillius (an expressive Jack Kilpatrick) creep down a staircase and secretly watch Leontes’ violent treatment of Hermione. It is clear in Wheeldon that Mamillius dies from the shock of what he witnesses. In Shakespeare, Hermione faints at the news, whereas in Wheeldon she faints at the sight of her dead child. In both play and ballet, Paulina (Heather Ogden), Hermione’s faithful servant, hurries Hermione off stage and returns to tell Leontes his queen is dead.

It is noteworthy that the ballet works perfectly well without the appearance of Dion and Cleomenes from the Oracle at Delphi with the news that Hermione is innocent. While the Oracle and Leontes’ repudiation of it adds a supernatural element to the story, it is not necessary to the highly emotional interaction of Leontes and Hermione that Wheeldon makes his focus. The pas de deux that Wheeldon gives the king and queen have nothing to do with romance. Every time Hermione tries to embrace Leontes to convince him of the truth, he cast her away, even flinging her to the floor. Leontes’ lifts are all about mocking Hermione, such as when he carries her about head down feet up. When Hermione in on the floor, Leontes humiliates her by dancing closely around her body.

Shakespeare has Paulina cudgel Leontes with a torrent of words whereas Wheeldon has Paulina physically cudgel him until his fit of madness fades and the enormity of what he has done oppresses him. Wheeldon has Paulina form a circle with her arms and Leontes pushes his torso through it, as if to suggest that he will accept whatever healing Paulina can give him.

Since Leontes has commanded that Perdita be taken to a wild place and exposed, his major domo Antigonus (Peng-Fei Jiang), sails to Bohemia, and in a calm between bouts of a storm places the baby on the beach with a box of jewelry including the emerald on a ribbon. Composer Joby Talbot creates the storm with a pounding score with a wind machine and blazes of brass. Famed puppeteer Basil Twist visualizes the storm with a huge buffeting sheet of silk. After Antigonus deposits the baby, the silk rises up and we can detect the face of a bear imprinted on it. This is a brilliant way of staging Shakespeare’s famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear”, which if a man in a bear costume were used would cause more laughter than fear.

After an interval, the ballet continues with Act 2 set in Bohemia. What lovers of Shakespeare will miss is the absence of the character Time. Time has a wonderful speech that makes us aware of the passing of time while we watch the play, certainly one of the most metatheatrical speeches Shakespeare ever wrote. While Wheeldon omits the character of Time, Crowley in some way compensates for by his design for Act 2. Dominating the scene is a huge wishing tree, its branches hung, the programme notes, with over 2000 necklaces. The wishing tree, a feature of many cultures around the globe, functions as the conduit of human wishes to the gods. It is a link between heaven and earth, the realm of timelessness and the realm of mortality.

The presence of the wishing tree makes an important second point. Unlike all other productions of The Winter’s Tale I have seen, this production characterizes Sicilia by its profusion of statuary, thus preparing audiences for the revelation of the final act. For Sicilia, Crowley also lowers large paintings against the cyclorama to indicate the seasons. The sculpture and paintings define Sicilia as a place of art. The huge wishing tree helps define Bohemia as a place of nature. In the ballet Crowley’s designs bring out the paradoxical relation between art and nature that is one of Shakespeare’s primary themes. As Polixenes tells Perdita concerning hybridizing flowers, “This is an art / Which does mend nature, change it rather, but / The art itself is nature”. Wheeldon brings out this theme through his choreography of the friendship between Leontes and Polixenes and through the love demonstrated by their children, Perdita and Florizel.

Shakespeare’s Time tells us that 16 years have passed, but we can see it instantly in the ballet when Perdita (Tirion Law) appears as a young woman wearing the Hermione’s emerald on a ribbon. We note that the kurta-like garment worn my all the men in Sicilia is worn only by nobles in Bohemia. Florizel (Naoya Ebe), Polixenes’ son, in love with Perdita, is first seen wearing one and must change out of it to fit in with the more rustic look of the ordinary Bohemians.

The Bohemian dances first seen in Act 1 are more extended in Act 2. We had noted that the music of the Bohemians used instruments different from those of the Sicilians. In Act 2 Wheeldon has introduces an onstage banda that includes such instruments that give Bohemia its sound as a bansuri (an ancient type of bamboo flute) and a dulcimer.

Reinforcing the idea that Bohemia is a society that has remained closer to its origins, Wheeldon also stages the dances in Act 2 in a more old-fashioned manner. As in some of the great classic ballets, the corps form a U-shape inside of which is the dancing area. Here solo dances and pas de deux take place that, unlike the dances of Sicilia that flow into each other, have distinct beginnings and endings, meaning that the audience, unlike in Act 1, is encouraged to applaud after each variation. Florizel and Perdita have two extraordinary pas de deux where Law demonstrates her incredible fluidity of movement and Ebe demonstrates his grace and strength. Their pas de deux contrast completely with the aggressive pas de deux of Leontes and Hermione in Act 1. Here Florizel literally elevates Perdita by holding her with one hand above his head.

Those familiar with the play will note that Wheeldon has omitted the character of the wily Autolycus. Autolycus is a thief and seller of trinkets and ballads who preys on the crowd at the festival in Bohemia. Shakespeare uses him as an example of art as deceit to contrast with the theme as art as uplifting miracle that will appear at the play’s conclusion. Wheeldon provides no parallel to this character. Instead, he elevates the character of the Shepherd’s Son (Albjon Gjorllaku), who embodies dance as athleticism in contrast to Florizel’s embodiment of dance as elegance.

Polixenes does not look kindly on the love of his son with a person he thinks is a mere shepherdess and violently breaks up their dancing. After throwing Florizel to the ground, he dances over and around his body as Leontes had around Hermione’s, signifying that Polixenes is suffering a fit of malice similar to Leontes’. Florizel and Perdita flee in a boat for Sicilia closely followed by Polixenes, a scene staged in a masterfully simple but highly theatrical manner.

Before the Bohemians arrive in Sicilia, Wheeldon shows how dramatically Leontes has changed. Now it is Paulina, not he, who dominates. Wheeldon illustrates this clearly by having Leontes move forward, bent over, his head resting on Paulina’s hand. As part of his punishment, he invites Paulina to step over and around his prone body as he had over Hermione’s.

The transformation scene in Wheeldon is unlike that in Shakespeare since Paulina allows only Leontes to see the statue of Hermione she has commissioned. Unlike every previous production of The Winter’s Tale that I’ve seen, the statue of Hermione also includes a statue of Mamillius. In this way, Wheeldon, much more than Shakespeare, reminds us that there were two victims of Leontes’ temporary madness.

The synopsis in the programme states of the conclusion, “Suddenly, the statue comes to life – it is Hermione, who is alive and has been kept in hiding by Paulina for 16 years”. That is rather unfortunate because one feature of all four of Shakespeare’s romances (such as this and The Tempest), is the presence of miracles. How the statue comes to life is a mystery that is not meant to be resolved so prosaically as the synopsis would have it. In any case, Wheeldon choreographs in in such a way that Isabel Kinch as Hermione seems not fully awake to her new status of life until halfway through her and Leontes’ celebratory dance. One feature of this dance is Leontes’ carrying Hermione on his back, her arms held straight out, as if Leontes were bearing her as a cross. The key is that unlike his actions in Act 1, Leontes is now supporting Hermione and, as various lifts demonstrates, is cherishing her again. My one quibble with this scene is that I do wish Wheeldon had allowed us more time for Leontes to wonder at Hermione as a statue before having her come to life.

In a move not in Shakespeare, Wheeldon has Leontes, after his dance with Hermione, rush up to the statue of Mamillius, touching it as if hoping to reawaken it too. But this statue does not come alive. Happy as the reunion is, with Leontes shaking Polixenes out of his fit and both fathers blessing the union of Florizel and Perdita, Wheeldon underscores that Leontes’ madness caused irreparable damage and that even miracles can extend only so far.

Ballets rarely provide so much matter to ponder as does Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale. In this production all elements come together to tell Shakespeare’s tale in dance in the most effective and affecting way possible – Wheeldon’s sensitive, insightful choreography; Joby Talbot’s propulsive, John Adams-like score; Bob Crowley’s gorgeous and deeply considered design; and Natasha Katz’s always apposite lighting. The dancers at opening night all, except Naoya Ebe, making their role debuts, were models of technical precision and passionate interpretation. The Winter’s Tale was acclaimed as a modern masterpiece when it premiered in London in 2014 and again when it premiered in Toronto in 2015. Seeing the ballet now only confirms that such acclaim is fully justified.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Tirion Law as Perdita, Isabella Kinch as Hermione and Ben Rudisin as Leontes, © 2025 Karolina Kuras; Ben Rudisin as Leontes, Isabella Kinch as Hermione, Jack Kilpatrick as Mamillius and Donald Thom as Polixenes, © 2025 Karolina Kuras; Ben Rudisin as Leontes and  Isabella Kinch as Hermione, © 2025 Bruce Zinger; the wishing tree and corps in Bohemia, © 2016 Karolina Kuras; Ben Rudisin as Leontes, © 2025 Bruce Zinger.

For tickets visit: national.ballet.ca.