SOURCE: Flanders, Judith. “Time's Corporate Whirligig.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5123 (8 June 2001): 20.

In the following review, Flanders presents a mixed review of Nicholas Hytner's 2001 production of The Winter's Tale at London's National Theatre. While Hytner's vision of a menacing, corporate Sicilia convincingly accentuated Leontes's paranoia, Flanders avers, the director lost control of his production with his free-wheeling interpretation of the Bohemia episodes.

Nicholas Hytner has brought The Winter's Tale into the arctic wastes of the Olivier Theatre, and he fills it, and us, with warmth. With him is a cast of exceptional authority: Alex Jennings as Leontes, Claire Skinner as Hermione and, most sensationally, Deborah Findlay as Paulina.

As the play opens, we are tumbled directly into the action via some rather unnecessary cutting and reorganization; instead of two Lords of Bohemia and Sicilia setting the scene for us, Mamillius, dressed as Time, recites for his parents' friends at...