One of Shakespeare’s most adventurous and least staged plays, Pericles, Prince of Tyre follows a young prince forced into exile after uncovering a deadly royal secret. What follows is a sweeping journey across oceans and kingdoms marked by storms, shipwrecks, separation, survival, and ultimately reunion. It is currently under production at the Boston Court Theatre in Pasadena, but done as a re-conceptualization of Shakespeare’s play in classicist Ellen McLaughlin’s gorgeous modernized verse translation. What makes the Pericles seem especially relevant today is its plot based on incest, threats of sexual violence, and depiction of human trafficking. Pericles is at the Boston Court Theatre from August 20 through September 27 – and its official opening night was August 28.
Director Margaret Shigeko Starbuck chose to set the play as an amateur performance done in an emergency evacuation center. A torrential rainstorm that has forced local residents to take shelter from the storm in a high school gym with cots and emergency supplies. As the electricity begins to fail, the group of refugees from the storm find among them a theatre director with an envelop full of acting scripts for a play named “Pericles.” This man is none other than John Gower, an elderly theatre director with a flair for the stagecraft. He motivates the others in the shelter to spend their time reading parts of the play as he doles out roles. This brilliant touch of staging marks a clever use of Gower as the narrator of a tale that the real historical British writer John Gower actually penned in his Confessio Amantis (1386-1390), which examined both courtly love and Christian ethics through more than a hundred embedded narrative tales. Shakespeare was greaty inspired by the 14th century poet Gower and the Confessio Mantis where he found the plot of his play.
John Gower (played by veteran Shakespeare actor Joel Swetow) introduces each act of Shakespeare’s play with a prologue to set the scene and explain the large lapses in time between the acts. The play opens in the court of Antiochus, king of Antioch, who has offered the hand of his beautiful daughter to any man who answers his riddle; but those who fail shall die.
This is riddle, as uttered by Antiochus’ daughter:
I am no Viper, yet I feed
On mother’s flesh which did me breed:
I sought a husband, in which labour,
I found that kindness in a father;
He’s father, son, and husband mild,
I mother, wife; and yet his child:
How they may be, and yet in two,
As you will live resolve it you.
Pericles, the young Prince (ruler) of Tyre in Phoenicia, hears the riddle, and instantly understands its meaning: Antiochus is engaged in incestuous with his daughter. If he answers incorrectly, he will be killed, but if he reveals the truth, he will be killed anyway. Pericles hints that he knows the answer, and asks for more time to think. Antiochus (voiced by Gower as narrator) grants him forty days, and then sends an assassin after him. However, Pericles has fled the city in disgust. Pericles is played by Randolph Thompson, a fine actor with an impressive resume of Shakespeare performances.
Pericles returns to his home kingdom in Tyre, where his trusted friend and counsellor Helicanus (played by the talented and versatile Juliane Chidi Hill) advises him to leave the city, for Antiochus surely will hunt him down and kill him. Pericles leaves Helicanus is left as regent and sails to Tarsus, a city beset by famine. The generous Pericles gives the governor of the city, Cleon (Adam J. Smith), and his wife Dionyza (Desiree Mee Jung), grain from his ship to save their people. The famine ends, and after being thanked profusely by Cleon and Dionyza, Pericles continues on.
A storm wrecks Pericles’ ship and washes him up on the shores of Pentapolis, He is rescued by a group of poor fishermen (Julianne Chidi Hill, Jaime Gallo, Rio Rasch, & Alexander Mato) who inform him that Simonides, King of Pentapolis, is holding a tournament the next day and that the winner will receive the hand of his daughter Thaisa (Nicole Javier) in marriage. Fortunately, one of the fishermen (Rio Rasch) drags Pericles’ suit of armour on shore that very moment, and the prince decides to enter the tournament. Gower as narrator steps in to play Simonides. Although his equipment is rusty, Pericles wins the tournament and potentially the hand of Thaisa in marriage. After some quizzing, we discover that Thais is deeply attracted to Pericles. Simonides initially expresses doubt about the union, but soon comes to like Pericles and allows them to wed.
A letter sent by the noblemen from Tyre reaches Pericles in Pentapolis, who decides to return to Tyre with the pregnant Thaisa. Again, a storm arises while at sea, and Thaisa appears to die giving birth to her child, Marina. The sailors insist that Thaisa’s body be set overboard in order to calm the storm. Pericles grudgingly agrees, and Marina’s well-sealed wooden coffin is dropped in the stormy sea. After the storm subsides, Pericles decides to stop at Tarsus because he fears that his infant daughter Marina may not survive the storm.
Luckily, Thaisa’s casket washes ashore at Ephesus near the residence of Lord Cerimon (Desiree Mee Jung), a physician who revives her. Thinking that Pericles died in the storm, Thaisa (Nicole Javier) becomes a priestess in the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus. Pericles departs to rule Tyre, leaving Marina in the care of Cleon (Adam J. Smith) and Dionyza (Desiree Mee Jung).
All this happens before Act III, where the clear writing of Shakespeare overtakes the Odyssey-like set of storms and mishaps for beleaguered Pericles. Meanwhile, when Pericles returns to Tarsus to ask about the fate of his daughter who he has left with Cleon and Dionyza. The governor and his wife claim she has died; in grief, he takes to the sea.
John Gower (Joel Swetow) as narrative guide moves us ahead some 15 years or so to meet Marina as a beautiful, young woman who happens to be more beautiful than Philoten, the daughter of Cleon and Dionyza. Marina’s beauty and grace so disturbed Dionyza (Desiree Mee Jung) and she plots the murder of Marina. (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson). The plan is thwarted when pirates kidnap Marina and then sell her to a brothel in Mytiene. We soon discover the Marina has a rapturous beauty connected to her virginity, much like Isabella in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.”
The brothel scene is high comedy with the main bawd (a superb Julianne Chidi Hill) trying to teach Marina of the ways to excite male clients despite the rampant scourge of syphilis. There, Marina manages to keep her virginity by convincing the men that they should seek virtue. The high point is the visit of Lysimachus (Alexander Matos), the local governor of Mytiene, to the brothel and her charming him into behaving like a “gentleman.” Worried that she is ruining their market, the brothel rents her out as a tutor to respectable young ladies. She becomes famous for music and other decorous entertainments.
Meanwhile, flash forward with the narrative by Gower, Pericles returns to Tarsus after many years to ask about the fate of his daughter who he has left with Cleon and Dionyza. The governor and his wife claim she has died; in grief, he takes to the sea. Pericles sees the pricey fake monument set up to memorialize Marina. Enter narrator John Gower again to clarify the passage of time and the complete despondency of Pericles over the double loss of his wife and daughter. Little does he know about the real fate of either.
Pericles’ wanderings bring him to Mytilene where the governor Lysimachus, seeking to cheer him up, brings in Marina to sing a song to Pericles who is unwilling and unable to talk to anyone. Marina attempts to communicate with this strange man without knowing who he is in reality. Who has the sadder story to share? They compare their stories and Marina knows the name of her father who she assumed had drowned at sea and reveals the name of her mother Thais. The two joyfully realize they are father and daughter.
Next, the goddess Diana appears in a dream to Pericles, and tells him to come to the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, where he finds Thaisa. The wicked Cleon and Dionyza are killed when their people revolt against their crime. Lysimachus, as a much reformed man, asks Pericles for the hand of Marina in marriage. All these marvelous reunions are the stuff of Shakespeare’s late romantic comedies – where the seeming dead are found to be alive and able to fix the ravages of time in the world of tragic events. A well-chosen cast performs Pericles with a clear distinction of the parts they are given by the narrator Gower and they master the movement of sets and props effortlessly, including the opening scenes in relative darkness with flashlights on faces.
