SHAKESPEARE is back at Bedminster’s Tobacco Factory, in a stunning new production by Heidi Vaughan, the venue’s artistic director and CEO.

It seems a long time since the company Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory was last performing on the cigar packing room floor of the former Wills Factory. Andrew Hilton’s company ran for 20 years in the space, building up a national reputation for presenting the works of Shakespeare (and occasional other writers) with large casts of often local actors who concentrated on the text and the delivery rather than “radical” concepts by zeitgeist-chasing directors. The final show was in autumn 2019, just missing the ravages of COVID.

Like so many theatres, the Tobacco Factory has struggled since that first March 2020 lockdown, followed by months of uncertainty and now a cost of living crisis that has forced cuts to all “non- essential” budgets – the arts at the forefront. Heidi Vaughan, with more than two decades of theatre under her belt, was appointed in 2022, and has spent the intervening months building up the Tobacco Factory’s framework again. At last it was time to bring The Bard back, to an eager and excited press night audience.

The director has chosen a cast and crew all of whom are drawn from a 25-mile radius of Bristol, and has envisaged the story of unfounded jealousy, young love … and, of course, that bear … in a timeless setting. It is all about human emotion, but here, unusually, Leontes is not a tyrannical baddie but a man suddenly overcome with an obsession that literally makes him mad. We see the compelling Felix Hayes in the throes of his jealousy ­– one minute tipsy with delight and celebration alongside his wife Hermione and his best friend Polixenes, and the next a raging, vengeful monster bent on destroying the two people he most loves. This makes the final redemption all the more moving.

Rose Wardlaw, an unusual Paulina, eschews the familiar patient persistence of Hermione’s supporter to create a picture of determination and spunk as she picks and bellows at Leontes, shaping his mind for the big reveal she knows will eventually come. Alice Barclay’s Hermione has all the passion and endurance she needs, making a totally believable wronged wife who continues to love her errant husband.

Casting starry Bedminster resident Bill Ward as Polixenes brings a blokish charisma to the visiting king, and it’s quite understandable that Dorian Simpson’s Camillo is drawn to both royal employers. It was a stroke of genius to cast Stu Mcloughlin, now best known as half of Living Spit, as the chancer Autolycus. His musical prowess adds an extra dimension to the production.

Heidi Vaughan has created a bucolic and festive masque in the second half, as the villagers danced and fooled around Genevieve Sabherwal (Leontes’ daughter Perdita) and her beloved Florizel, who happens to be Polixenes’ son. In a scene packed with frolicking revellers, Corinna Buchan stays in the memory.

 

The atmosphere of this festivity makes stark contrast with the denouement, full of shock and remorse and happiness, and the actors leave almost in silence. It’s a hugely impressive way to end this difficult play, which continues at the Tobacco Factory until 29th March. See it if you can.

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