Column: A fall visit to American Players Theatre brings notes of sadness and hope

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN - I’d forgotten the verdant pleasures of southwest Wisconsin, a hilly part of the plain Midwest. And I’d similarly lost touch with the sensorial pleasure of Shakespeare surrounded by trees, Shakespeare under a moon, Shakespeare as the chill of the fall reminds you that nothing in our firmament lasts forever. But a September return to American Players Theatre in Spring Green, my first visit to an old haunt since before the pandemic, reminded me of all of that. And it all felt more precious for reasons that probably are more to do with me than the theater.

Director Shana Cooper’s truly gorgeous production of “The Winter’s Tale” is in many ways the consummate APT experience. The Bard’s plays were mostly written for an outdoor theater and Shakespeare was very much aware of the position of the sun in the sky and the coming of dusk. You can see this in “Much Ado About Nothing,” when the bright sunlight of an Italian afternoon gives way to the gloom of Hero’s tomb. But it is writ large in “Winter’s Tale,” when a harsh and hasty condemnation of a spouse is made in the rash light of day, only for the magic of redemption to be born in the twilight - of both a day and a man’s life.

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