The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited. In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.
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“The Gap of Time, a modern retelling of A Winter’s Tale, launches the Hogarth Project, for which contemporary authors write novelizations of Shakespeare’s plays. The performances of Penelope Rawlins, Mark Bazeley, and Ben Onwukwe enhance Winterson’s graphic scenes and gritty dialogue with their clarity and flawless pacing. The trio’s pleasing British accents are particularly appropriate in the earlier scenes set in England. Winterson has cleverly updated the names and personalities of the original cast…the narrators handle the multiple roles smoothly, using subtle shifts of tone and intensity to establish character differentiation.”
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