Raising the dead

In his late ‘romances’ Shakespeare reaches out for happy endings in which sinners are forgiven and the unjustly dead restored to life. This, plainly enough, is territory more problematic than his worlds of tragedy and comedy. For Cymbeline, the RSC’s Complete Works cycle ordered up a rewrite from the Cornish Kneehigh troupe and for The Tempest exiled Prospero to the Arctic. Pericles and The Winter’s Tale it handed to Dominic Cooke, who now subjects both plays to trial by promenade performance. Cooke has cleared out the stalls, thereby creating as large a playground for actors and standee spectators as the Swan will allow. Your £15 ticket buys you a  participatory role in the show, though the proportion deducted by Equity is not  disclosed.

Critics were given a choice of promenade (please) or sit upstairs (if you must). In compliant mood, I opted for the former, though didn’t regret chickening out to the galleries after surviving a groundling’s entanglement in The Winter’s Tale.