Men go crazy sometimes, and in Shakespeare’s world a mid-life crisis can become epic. That’s what happens in “The Winter’s Tale,” the Bard’s rich, romantic fable of a king gone mad with jealousy and saved by love and forgiveness. Director Jesse Berger makes his ISF debut with this storybook production of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. It’s set in magical and exotic lands where a queen in peril, a princess lost, thieves, clowns, country folk — and one hungry bear — need more than just a few miracles that pull off the happy ending.

Dana Oland