The Winter's Tale is not a play that I knew anything about so the RSC production visiting Edinburgh this week was welcome on that count alone.  The theatre was full on opening night as well it might have been for the production was splendid.

The story is pretty daft.  Leontes, King of Sicilia, is convinced on the flimsiest of evidence that his wife is pregnant by his best chum Polixenes, King of Bohemia.  P, who is visiting L, escapes with the help of L's right-hand man Camillo who doesn't want to carry out the orders he has to murder him.  The Queen, Hermione, is delivered of a girl child.  L is restrained from dispatching her to Hades and instead has her sent off to be abandoned on a distant shore.  Luckily for the plot that turns out to be Bohemia where she is found by a passing shepherd.

Hermione is pronounced dead and L's son comes down with a heavy dose of something that finishes him off too.  L then learns from the Delphic Oracle that he had the wrong end of the stick all the time.  His late Queen was innocent.  Weeping he is hoist aloft by a wonderful piece of stage machinery where he spends the rest of the first half and most of the second.

Years pass and Perdita (the abandoned Princess) grows up and attracts the attention of Prince Florizel (son of P).  Of course F and P are ignorant of her royal blood.  F doesn't care but P is livid that his son should be dallying with a shepherd's daughter.  I couldn't be sure from her accent on which side of the Pennines the sheep were grazing but it was one or t'other.  There is a lot of singing and dancing and Shakespearean horsing around before the young lovers flee pursued by P.

They get to Sicilia as do their pursuers et al, where thanks to the shepherd's revelations of how he found the girl and the trinkets left with her L realises she is his daughter.  There is a lot of rejoicing and relief on P's part that she's fit to marry his son after all (just need to tidy up that accent).

Even more rejoicing ensues when that nifty stage machinery is found to conceal a statue of Hermione that comes to life.  Everyone is very happy and no-one spoils the party by mentioning L's dead son.

The happy youngsters lead off a final dance that eventually involves the entire cast.  If you have ever tried to get co-ordinated movement from two or more actors you will know just how marvellous a piece of work this is.

Great show.