SOURCE: Jays, David. Review of The Winter's Tale. New Statesman 128, no. 4419 (15 January 1999): 38-9.

In the following review, Jays asserts that Gregory 1999 Doran's Royal Shakespeare Company rendering of The Winter's Tale was a “supremely intelligent production, lucid in every detail” and notes that Antony Sher gave a powerful performance as Leontes.

If actors can be auteurs, then Antony Sher, along with Fiona Shaw, is the supreme example in British theatre, encouraging productions prismed through his interpretation. In Gregory Doran's absorbing RSC production of The Winter's Tale, Sher helps us stare through the weak-hinged mind of King Leontes, who suspects his wife and friend of adultery. There is no cause, no cause, but we see the walls close in on him, hear amplified whispers of prurient imaginings. Sher uses his curious quality of distant amiability, an intimacy that refuses to catch fire, to drag us through the precipitous adversity of...