[In the following review, Macaulay derides Matthew Warchus's 2002 Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Winter's Tale for its unnecessary length and for the English actors' distracting use of American accents.]

The RSC is starting a London regime at the Roundhouse, and I wish it well there. This is an exciting, unpretentious space. But it has acquired steep, stiff new seating for its RSC season, with entrances so circuitous that, on press night, the opening production had to start more than 20 minutes late while many of us were still queueing to reach our seats. The circumstances are irritating. And the production is unimportant, eccentric, unnecessary.

The RSC needs a production that will make the simplicity and immediacy of the Roundhouse bring out its best virtues. It doesn't need a Winter's Tale that (not counting the late start) runs at way over three-and-a-half hours; a production set in mid-20th-century gangster America (with accents to match); a production featuring an elaborate double staircase and an 8ft chandelier, a production which begins with a five-minute silent conjuring trick that only has bearing on the play for those who already know what will happen (20 years later) in Act Five; a production that depends on the cumbersome method of shooing a “promenade” minority of the audience around (sit here for this scene; sit there for that; stand up for the trial; sit down for Bohemia). Matthew Warchus's staging does have its merits, but you have to remind yourself of what they are.

I take Warchus's point that American accents can unlock several aspects of Shakespeare's English, but this doesn't work well enough in practice with British actors. You're perfectly aware that most of these accents aren't the real thing long before Myra Lucretia Taylor (whose is) comes on as Paulina. Meanwhile the gangsterland glitz unlocks nothing. Warchus's production, with its country-and-western Bohemia and its deafness to Shakespeare's besetting fascination with issues of royalty, is not the Winter's Tale that I need any more than the RSC does.

Too bad: amid this generally extraneous production, there are fine features. Shaven-headed as a dangerous, violent, unpredictable Mafioso Leontes, Douglas Hodge does most to make the production succeed, and sometimes leads one clean through the American surface into the play's wracked heart. Lines of jealous fury such as “It is a bawdy planet”, “My wife is slippery”, and—above all—the lines that climax in “I have drunk, and seen the spider” all strike savagely home. Still, one feels that Warchus's production has only added to Hodge's problems in this notoriously taxing role. As his wronged wife Hermione, Anastasia Hille over-indulges the nervous energy that can make her an interesting actor and neglects such basic theatrical points as fully supported diction. Myra Lucretia Taylor (Paulina) gives the most completely convincing performance of all. But it's a long evening, and feels longer.