A TALL TALE, A SHIMMERING MAGIC
Of all Shakespeare’s performs that is now the rarest staged, not with out purpose: some early scenes are co- written with a recent John Wilkins, its story relies on intricate interrupting narration by the medieval poet Gower, and the scene ricochets across the historical Mediterranean kingdoms and cities – Tyre, Antioch, Tarsus, Pentapolis, Ephesus, Mytilene . Our hero escapes homicide after discovering in horror a ruler incestuously abusing his daughter ,is shipwrecked, finds a spouse, loses her and the new child Marina in one more storm, solely to seek out each once more years later in a blaze of therapeutic magic and coincidence. It is messy. Moreover,unusually in Shakespeare its hero the Prince of Tyre is an harmless: no tragic flaw, no envy or malice, Pericles is a correct gentleman, making an attempt to do proper.
So salute director Tamara Harvey for selecting this as her first outing because the RSC’s new co-director, and making of it one thing remarkably stunning. It is dreamlike, transferring, long-memorable. She artfully makes use of, early on, dim-lit tableaux of motion and stillness, veiled dance and half-glimpsed motion behind a curtain of ropes (Jonathan Fensom’s design is framed by cordage, and the storms at sea are a chic tangle of untamed motion by Annie-Lunenette Deakin-Foster). All this reinforces the folktale-epic strangeness of the story, lulling and enchanting us. Claire Van Kampen’s rating isn’t any small a part of that enchantment: when the healer Cerimon (Jacqueline Boatswain) requires music as she appears to be like into the coffin of Thaisa, the backbone tingles.
Against this dreamy storytelling stand the actual people. Alfred Enoch’s Pericles is ideal casting: youtful, pure, steadfast, boyish, alarmed by wickedness and hostility, childlike in his beginnings however deepening into the immense damaged grief of his losses, and a hysteria of ultimate aid which brings precise laughter from the viewers. Around his story circle dangerous individuals and higher ones: trustworthy Helicanus and creepy Antiochus, Cleon grateful for his help however collaborating in homicide and lies along with his evil spouse Dionyza (Miriam o’Brien stepped in with panache on press night time). And there’s a scene-stealing Christian Patterson as King Simonides, presiding over a comical setpiece event for his daughter Thaisa and, after some high grade teasing of Pericles and viewers, handing her over to shabbier shipwrecked Pericles as a bride with Lychorida guffawing behind him. For sure, there’s human comedy right here in addition to magic: the fishermen of Pentapolis, the infuriated bawds of the Mytilene brothel, are all a pleasure.
And fantastically, the narrator shouldn’t be Gower: right here it’s, we uncover, the misplaced daughter Marina herself. Rachelle Diedericks tells her father’s story from earlier than her start till she turns into within the late scenes a protagonist, kidnapped and enslaved to the brothel the place – in some extra fantastic scenes – she ruins their enterprise together with her steadfast purity.
For all of the play’s oddity the playwright’s greatest tones ring true by way of Marina: “Born in a tempest when my mother died, the world to me is like a lasting storm..” As she pleads for her life earlier than the pirate kidnappers swing down on but extra ropes, Shakespeare’s voice echoes unmistakeable “I never kill’d a mouse, nor hurt a fly:I trod upon a worm against my will, But I wept for it.” Wonderful.
And fantastic to present her, again as narrator, the epilogue with its blessing of us all, for gathering to listen to the outdated story : “New joy wait on you!” So it did.
Rsc.org.uk to 21 sept.
Rating 4.
