Saturday 21 – Saturday 28 June, 2008
(no performance Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 June)
Venue: The Leper Chapel, Barnwell Junction, Newmarket Road, Cambridge
Time: 8pm

The Winter’s Tale

by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s mysterious late masterpiece – a drama of Death and Rebirth, Loss and Redemption.

Leontes, King of Sicilia, becomes possessed by a motiveless and terrifying jealousy. It engulfs his kingdom and family, leaving his wife and son dead and his baby daughter cast out.

Sixteen years pass; Winter turns to Summer and Tragedy turns to Comedy.

The Cambridge Leper Chapel provides a wonderful setting for this drama of changing fortunes and seasons, moving from the stark 12th century interior – the Winter Palace of the jealous king – to the beautiful wooded surroundings, site of the ancient Stourbridge Fair and ideal for the play’s sudden leap into the world of Bohemia, an anarchic summer world of fun, fairs, song-and-dance men, peasants, pickpockets, romantic liaisons and bears that eat people.