It is, of course, not the done thing to criticise Shakespeare. Nonetheless, I’ve always been with the sceptical Ben Jonson when it comes to this late romance, feeling that the lurches in tone, plot, place and plausibility would have benefited from another draft of the script.

Academics may get excited about the piece’s “moral symmetries” but it’s a lot to ask that any production wrestle multiple tussling elements, not to mention that blessed bear, into a coherent whole. David Farr, in an exuberant first job as the RSC’s new associate director, certainly throws everything at it.

To his great credit, nearly all of it sticks, leading us meaningfully from the chilly, jealous Sicilia of the first half to the loopy rural Bohemia of the second, to that wonderful ultimate thawing of winter-hardened hearts.

In a striking visual metaphor, designer Jon Bausor has the Bohemian rustics sit among collapsed piles of books from the formerly imposing shelves of Leontes’s elegant early 20th-century-look court, as if to illustrate how all that should-be wisdom fruitlessly left the king stripped of everything he loved.

Greg Hicks has, thankfully, tempered his customary sardonic tone to give a fine account of the coiled-up broodings of the intractable Leontes and usefully reminds us that whereas Othello needs to be goaded into jealousy, Leontes is already there when the play starts. His condemnations of his wronged queen Hermione (a nicely resolute Kelly Hunter) as “slippery” and a “bed-swerver” ring out.

After darkness must come light and the young, redemptive love of Florizel (ardent Tunji Kasim) and Perdita (Samantha Young), the long-lost daughter of Leontes and Hermione, is certainly compelling, even if Young struggled with both her comprehensibility and costume on opening night.

I still found the Bohemian scenes overlong and under-funny but the playing-out of that poignant resolution, with its living breathing statue, is beautifully judged for maximum impact by Farr.
A fine start to the RSC’s 2009 ensemble season.

In rep until 3 October. Information: 0844 800 1110, www.rsc.org.uk .