{"id":632520,"date":"2026-08-12T03:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T03:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/632520\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T03:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T03:35:17","slug":"raul-esparza-and-lily-rabe-talk-the-winters-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/632520\/","title":{"rendered":"Ra\u00fal Esparza and Lily Rabe Talk \u2018The Winter\u2019s Tale\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The paranoid despot is a familiar trope, in fairy tales and in fact. But what happens when a king\u2019s delusions have real consequences? And can forgiveness ever sprout in the frost of grief? These are just two of the chilly questions at the center of Shakespeare\u2019s The Winter\u2019s Tale, staged this summer as part of the Public Theater\u2019s Free Shakespeare in the Park<\/a> series in Central Park. (It runs through August 23.) Directed by Delacorte Theater veteran Daniel Sullivan, the forceful production stars Ra\u00fal Esparza as Leontes, the jealous king of Sicily, and Lily Rabe as his wrongly accused queen, Hermione.<\/p>\n

The play opens with Leontes convincing himself that a pregnant Hermione has been sleeping with his friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia (played by Gilbert Owuor). He quickly descends into madness, imprisons his wife, and banishes their newborn daughter, Perdita, certain she is a bastard. Hermione, overcome with grief from the sudden death of her other son, collapses and dies offstage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI studied videos of people with delusional jealousy. \u2018Morbid jealousy,\u2019 it is called,\u201d Esparza says. (Another name for the condition is \u201cOthello syndrome,\u201d named after Shakespeare\u2019s other, more famous delusional cuckold.) But who hasn\u2019t been certain that the world, or at least the group chat, is plotting against them? \u201cI recognize Leontes because I have had moments of extraordinary jealousy and anger that come out of nowhere,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t stop the feelings. They just go out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Esparza plays the unhinged tyrant with a quickness, his bright eyes darting and weaving with each newfangled notion. The performance should whet the appetites of those eager to see him return to Broadway in Galileo, a new musical opening this December. It will be Esparza\u2019s first role on the main stem in 14 years.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Photo: Marc J. Franklin<\/p>\n

\u201cReturning to Broadway is a very big deal. My last show, Leap of Faith, which I loved very much and loved doing, it had a great score but did not get a great production. It was a bit traumatic,\u201d he says frankly. When Leap of Faith closed a few weeks after opening, Esparza took a beat to get some perspective on his career. Incidentally, he did television, with long arcs on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Hannibal. Some of his fans don\u2019t even know that Esparza, a Tony-nominated Sondheim interpreter, can sing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI waited a long time. Galileo is so full of bangers and resonates with the times we are living in now,\u201d he says. \u201cShakespeare wrote The Winter\u2019s Tale when Galileo looked up at the stars. At that time, the state could tell you that what you were seeing wasn\u2019t real\u2014and you had to say that everything about science was a lie in order to simply survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabe is also returning to Broadway after several years away for a revival of Jon Robin Baitz\u2019s Other Desert Cities, starring opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus and John Benjamin Hickey. It begins previews in late September. \u201cI have one day off!\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

But for now, she is firmly in the swirl of this play. Rabe as Hermione is Tale\u2019s ballast of truth, and audiences who first experienced her deftness with the Bard as Portia in 2010\u2019s The Merchant of Venice (also directed by Sullivan at the Delacorte, then at the Broadhurst Theatre) will find her gifts evenly matched here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Photo: Joan Marcus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The paranoid despot is a familiar trope, in fairy tales and in fact. But what happens when a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[365,434,18,117,19,17,803,806],"class_list":["post-632520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-arts","tag-celebrities","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-textabovecenterfullbleed","tag-web"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}