One of the rarely-staged Shakespearean romances, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is receiving only its fourth production in the six-decades-plus history of the Stratford Festival (previous mountings were in 1973-4, 1986, and 2003). As with so many of the Bard's plays, the exact circumstances surrounding it are far from clear but it's generally believed to have been co-written with another author -- George Wilkins the most likely candidate.
It shares with the other late romance plays some common thematic streams: the essential nature of reconciliation and forgiveness, the concept that a wayward world needs to have its balance restored, and the use of a divine or magical intervention to assist in restoring that desired order and harmony.
Unlike the others of the group, Pericles has no sub-plot. Its single story line unfolds instead over a period of many years, and in many places around the Mediterranean world. As Pericles makes his way through this literal journey, he's also being taken on a metaphorical voyage of exploration to discover the qualities of an ideal state and ideal society by experiencing the less-than-ideal conditions prevailing in many of the states he visits. The play also displays an oddly modern preoccupation with the unsavoury treatment of women in a patriarchal society.
The curious parallels prevailing among the many scenes of the story naturally suggest to a modern eye the idea of archetypal figures. Director Scott Wentworth has deliberately underlined this part of his interpretation by using parallel casting of the same actors in different scenes.
And that's precisely where I found the greatest weakness of this production. It involved the use of Deborah Hay playing both the wife of Pericles, Thaisa, and his daughter, Marina (they only appear together on stage briefly in the last stage, where a substitute filled in for Thaisa). Hay's distinctive face and voice could not simply be wished away, and it lent an overtone of incest to the scene where Pericles at last meets his daughter -- one of the two moments of wonder unnecessarily blotted with a hint of evil. It didn't help matters at all that Hay had also played, in the Antioch scene, the role of the daughter (and incestuous lover) of the tyrannical ruler, Antiochus.
The other problem occasioned by the double casting had to do with Wayne Best as the unsavory and malicious Antiochus, and later as the pleasantly playful Simonides in Pentapolis. Best escaped the similarity of voice by shoving his voice up in pitch and resorting to a high-pitched, silly giggle as Simonides. The character is undoubtedly a humorous man, and certainly a bit of a joker, but he's not one of Shakespeare's foolish village idiots -- and that's how he sounded.
In both these cases, I felt that Wentworth's double-casting idea had backfired.
Otherwise, casting was strong throughout, and even minor characters were well-delineated. Deborah Hay was in her best form as Marina. Stephen Russell presented a steady air of gravity as Helicanus, the regent governing Tyre in Pericles' absence. David Collins presided gently and benevolently as the lord Cerimon over the near-ideal commonwealth of Ephesus.
At Mytilene, the scenes involving Marina's abduction and sale into a brothel produced some of the most memorable performances. Keith Dinicol as the Pander and Brigit Wilson as the Bawd played the management of the house with style and substance alike, two experts with their eagle eyes always trained on the profit margin. They wouldn't have been at all out of place in a staging of Dickens -- an impression strongly reinforced by Patrick Clark's Victorian costumes. Antoine Yared's performance as the governor, Lysimachus, managed the rapid transition from the customer ready to rape Marina to the considerate gentleman proposing marriage to her very believably.
Anyone who knows the script of this play is probably wondering what happened to Gower this time! (I was wondering myself beforehand, as his name didn't appear in the program's cast list). The medieval author John Gower (1330-1408) had told the story used for the play in his poem Confessio amantis. Wilkins and/or Shakespeare brought him into the play as a chorus figure to advance the action from place to place -- a very helpful device in an age before the invention of printed programs with scene lists!
Unfortunately, Gower's part provides the biggest weakness of the script -- what one writer has described as the most execrable rhyming couplets in the English language. Modern directors have tried all kinds of devices to make Gower palatable, often involving singing -- the use of those couplets does tend to suggest music.
Wentworth's conception here was as inspired as his double-casting scheme was flawed. He made extensive use of the goddess Diana and her maiden priestesses (garbed all in white habits like nuns) as a chorus to sing the lines in multi-part harmony -- indeed, almost chanting them at times. Other choral parts were broken up and shared among the actors in the play, in plain speech. I suspect there was also a certain amount of cutting.
At any rate, this serene and lovely choral singing not only lent beauty to the lines, but also clarified and reinforced the idea of Diana as a moving force in the story (she is mentioned several times throughout the play, although she only appears and actually speaks at the end). The chanting cast a ritualistic light across the play as a whole, an impression strengthened by those parallels among the scenes. I suspect this music also provided the cue for the fixed set, which consisted of a scrim curtain behind which appeared a wall set with numerous candles of varying heights -- a clear symbolic evocation of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, where the story reaches its culmination. This was placed beyond the tall doors at the far end of the long, narrow platform stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre, where the candles were periodically revealed whenever the doors were opened.
If this production of Pericles isn't a complete triumph, it's still an involving and thought-provoking look at a play that is a true rarity. That is partly due, no doubt, to the disjointed and sometimes slackly-written script, but also -- I think -- because Pericles makes us take a hard look at things that we know are real, but we'd rather not think about too much. It's not comfortable material. And that's definitely as it should be. In this respect, Wentworth and his company of fine Stratford actors have clearly hit the target in this presentation.
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