By James Goldman. Directed by Jack Paterson. A United Players production. At the Jericho Arts Centre on Saturday, June 4. Continues until June 26

Winter, in this production of The Lion in Winter, is a long season, but not without its diversions.

It’s Christmas 1183 and England’s Henry II is holding court in Chinon; Henry is lord of a good deal of what is now France. Ten years earlier, he imprisoned his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, after she led their sons in a rebellion against him. Sometimes, like this year, he lets her out so that she can join the family, including their treasonous offspring, for the holidays.

Though he’s 50 and contemplating his death, Henry keeps the 23-year-old Alais Capet as his mistress. Alais is betrothed to Henry’s son Richard, but Henry plans to keep sleeping with her even if the young couple weds. King Philip of France, who is Alais’s half-brother, and everybody’s favourite would-be ally, rounds out the holiday party.

The lot of them are obsessed with who gets to be the next king of England. Henry favours his pimply, craven youngest son, John. Although he gives her no thanks for it, Eleanor champions Richard, the macho warrior. Geoffrey, who is so pathological that his father accuses him of being made of gears, fends for himself.

James Goldman’s script has one good joke, the juxtaposition of high-stakes period drama with colloquial understatement, and Goldman repeats this joke in several variations. After a scene in which Eleanor tortures Henry with the claim that she slept with his father, for instance, Eleanor, left alone, sighs, “Well, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?”

Goldman also repeats his central dramatic dynamic: amid the furious dissembling, honest emotion breaks through. It’s pretty obvious from early on that Eleanor is still in love with Henry and that their opposing plans to summon armies to carve up their part of Europe are functions of their troubled marriage. As Eleanor says to her children, “Such, my angels, is the role of sex in history.”

There’s no reason to care deeply about these scheming, flippant neurotics; The Lion in Winter doesn’t have anywhere near the depth of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or King Lear, both of which it superficially resembles, but the play’s machinations are diverting, and the script is a showcase for bravura performances.

Eleanor is the heart of the piece, and in this production, which was directed by Jack Paterson, Marilyn Norry’s Eleanor is witty and passionate. William MacDonald makes a commanding Henry, Dayleigh Nelson fills out Geoffrey’s reptilian intelligence, and Alexander Lowe is credibly spineless as John. That said, there are more peaks and valleys in the script than we see on the stage. 

Paterson has directed a stylish production. He uses ritualized movement—characters circling one another, for instance—to punctuate some scenes. Andrew Pye’s lighting design is appropriately extreme and, with its soaring arches, Marcus Stusek’s set is simple but dramatic.

Still, the night I attended, the evening ran two hours and 40 minutes, including a substantial intermission, and that felt like more than enough.