Corcadorca brushes up its Shakespeare

THERE'S A PING-PONG table at the back of the Triskel Arts Centre rehearsal space: the players have a bat in one hand and a script in the other. At a longer, narrower table at the other end of the auditorium Pat Kiernan, the director, attempts to eat a hasty lunch, joined at intervals by members of the cast and crew gathering for another read-through of Corcadorca's newest venture, The Winter's Tale. The bat-and-ball pair reveal themselves as Leontes and Polixenes in the opening scene of one of Shakespeare's later plays.

Given Corcadorca’s propensity for taking a subversive approach, it seems reasonable to wonder if “Exit, pursued by a bear” means there will actually be a bear in this presentation. “Well, it’s the most famous stage direction in Shakespeare,” says Kiernan. “You have to have it, really.”

Always bucking the trend, Corcadorca goes inside just when everyone else is heading out. A reputation for the unusual shouldn’t disguise the company’s readiness to observe the authentic, especially as this piece marks a new development, with Cork Opera House as both venue and producer. Nor will Kiernan concede any lingering temptation to wonder what this in-house performance might be like if it were tackled in the company’s renowned site-specific tradition. “Not at all. You just look at the theatre as a site anyway. And I haven’t worked in a theatre for a long time; it’s really exciting to be in one again.”

The theatre has mounted the title across its riverside exterior, and this visual declaration of the house’s pre-eminent undertaking for its new and varied season emphasises a sense of something important happening.

Mary Hickson, chief executive of Cork Opera House, admits that, during 10 years working in theatre in Dublin, "the only thing that brought me back to Cork was to see Corcadorca. So when I got here it seemed the natural thing to connect that company with the Opera House. And I also feel that The Winter's Taleis really a Corcadorca kind of play: it fits their creative identity."

It might have been Hamlet. When Kiernan told Hickson that he had always wanted to direct Shakespeare at Cork Opera House, their thoughts, conscious of 12,000 seats to fill over the year, flew to plays in the school curriculum. But too many other companies were thinking the same way, and when Kiernan was allowed his personal choice he went for The Winter's Tale.

“This is a play which isn’t often performed. And it’s a more comfortable ground for me in terms of how theatrical it is: it’s a play that opens itself up, and, because it’s not familiar, people will be coming to it not knowing what’s going to happen.”

This is where the fusion of the theatre company and the theatre itself becomes more significant than usual, for this is a combination that Hickson sees as laying the foundations for future work together.

“It’s very important for the city to have our own theatre voice instead of constantly showing other people’s productions. It’s as though we’re not allowed to be ambitious in Cork – but why should that be? If we don’t believe we can do it ourselves, then there’s no hope for theatre in Cork.”

As Derbhle Crotty, Garrett Lombard, Muiris Crowley, Grace Kelley, Ronan Leahy, Raymond Keane and others open up their pages at the Triskel's table their words flow from Gavin Quinn's adaptation of the Arden edition of the play. Only the music of reconciliation composed by Mel Mercier of University College Cork is wanted to justify WH Auden's remark that the last act of The Winter's Taleis the most beautiful scene in all Shakespeare, "beautiful in the way a dream can be beautiful".

Pat Kiernan enjoys the redemptive complexity of the drama and the plot’s slide into a kind of magic realism, the conflict of innocence and cynicism, darkness and light. It’s the little boy Mamillius who announces that “a sad tale’s best for winter. I have one of sprites and goblins.” But this is not a sad tale, or at least not in the end. “These themes are contained within a rollicking story. What we have to work out is how the two different worlds, the winter and summer, can happen; we have to remember how fairy tales make things possible, and really that’s the clue for me: it’s a tale; that’s where the magic runs.”

The Winter's Taleis at Cork Opera House until October 22nd; cork operahouse.ie