Julanne Chidi Hill, Desiree Mee Jung, Adam J. Smith, Joel Swetow, Rio Rasch, Nicole Javier, Alexander Matos (photo by Brian Hashimoto)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Boston Court Pasadena
Through Sept. 27
RECOMMENDED
Desiree Mee Jung and Jamie Gallo (photo by Brian Hashimoto)
There’s a reason why Shakespeare’s Pericles is so infrequently produced. Dramaturgically speaking, it’s a mess. Its swiftly shifting locales and unlikely subplots can baffle the most intrepid interpreters. In fact, it’s so disjointed that scholars believe that it was written, at least partially, by 17th century hacks.
It takes an intrepid director to make sense of such a play, and director Margaret Shigeko Starbuck has daring to spare. Working from Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation, Starbuck boldly tackles multiple challenges in her current production at the Boston Court — a resourceful and clever staging that delights from start to finish.
Set in an “Emergency Evacuation Center and Lands Beyond” (Michelle Joo’s deceptively simplistic set unfolds to riches), the action opens as sodden evacuees take refuge in the shelter while a storm (credit John Ballinger’s striking sound design) rages outside. When the lights go out, flashlights (the opening effects in Pablo Santiago’s fine lighting design), illuminate the scene. In an attempt to rally his storm-tossed fellows, one of the group (Joel Swetow) brandishes a script and urges them to reenact Pericles, becoming the de facto narrator of the evening.
Initially reluctant, the “actors” eventually comply, and soon become fully invested in their impromptu performance. It’s a sort of “found theater” that makes shift with the objects at hand — pool noodles doubling as swords, microwaveable soup cups substituting for gold chalices, sheets of Mylar approximating billowing ocean waves — just a few instances of Rye Mandel’s exceptional props design.
In a nutshell (or, as Hamlet would have it, bounded in a nutshell), the discursive plot concerns the ramblings of Pericles (Randolph Thompson), ruler of Tyre. While competing for the hand of King Antiochus’s (Swetow) daughter, Pericles uncovers the king’s ruinous secret and must flee for his life.
His seafaring adventures take him from Tyre to Antioch to Tarsus to Pentapolis to Ephesus to Mytilene. (A charming “Pericles Tracker” in the lobby helps us make sense of his globe-trotting peregrinations).
After surviving a shipwreck, Pericles acquires a beloved wife, Thaisa (Nicole Javier) in Pentapolis, only to lose her when she dies in childbirth on the ship journeying back to Tyre.
Before setting off again on his travels, Pericles leaves his baby girl in the custody of King Cleon (Adam J. Smith). But years later, as Pericles’s beauteous daughter Marina (Troy Leigh-Ann Johnson), steals the limelight from her own daughter, Cleon’s jealous queen Dionyza (Desirée Mee Jung) orders her slain
That’s a rude précis of the story, which includes a timely visitation by pirates and timelier interventions from the goddess Diana. At the risk of revealing spoilers, suffice to say that the fate of Pericles’s dead wife and supposedly murdered daughter may not be as self-evident as initially supposed.
McLaughlin’s free-wheeling reimagination was commissioned by Play On Shakespeare as part of an ongoing project to adapt Shakespeare’s entire canon into modernized language while remaining faithful to the original plots. That’s a difficult balancing act, and the Play On project has drawn criticism from purists who oppose tampering with the Bard’s works to such an invasive degree.
However, while more familiar Shakespeare plays may be considered inviolable, the problematically plotted and less reverently esteemed Pericles provides McLaughlin with a prime opportunity to romp freely through Shakespeare’s (possibly corrupted) text. (Asked if she’s a woman, a character responds, “Well I ain’t a platypus.” Considering this strange mammal was not known to Europeans until the late 1700s, that line is just one example of McLaughlin’s light-hearted revisionism, which toys with our expectations at every turn).
The lynchpin of the cast, Swetow plays multiple roles, narrating the series of unfortunate events and keeping the action flowing. Thompson makes for a doughty Pericles, while Julanne Chidi Hill stands out as Pericles’s loyal advisor, who keeps his trust while he is away. Jung is a blast as Dionyza, the vicious queen who plots Marina’s murder from behind her Foster Grants, while Rio Rasch plays various dullards with a blank befuddlement that is hilarious.
A fusion of the classical with the contemporary, this Pericles has plenty of laughs and a surprisingly moving denouement. For any who consider Shakespeare’s troublesome play inaccessible and dull, this adventurous romp offers a welcome chance to reevaluate.
Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Thurs.-Sat., 7:30 pm, Sat.-Sun., 2 pm; thru Sept. 27. https://ci.ovationtix.com/112/production/1252158 2 hours, 30 minutes with intermission.
