ROYAL SHAKESPEARE’S RADIANT PERICLES
All the indicators promised that it’d be special: after a 30-year lull, England’s Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) entered a new and ongoing partnership. Part of this refreshed collaboration included bringing RSC’s production of Shakespeare’s seldom seen Pericles to Navy Pier. But it wasn’t until the first act was about to come to an end that I realized how extraordinary this presentation is.
Zach Wyatt as Pericles, Leah Haile as Thaisa, and the company
Published in 1609, the play itself was once cloaked in controversy. Early scholars disputed its authorship, believing it was either written by someone else or only co-authored by Shakespeare. Contemporary authorities are confident it is indeed Shakespeare’s work, but it would be interesting to see if any language cues might hint at why some questioned the play’s origins.
Inspired by a Middle English poem completed in the late 1300s, Pericles, the Prince of Tyre isn’t set in England on Chicago Shake’s Courtyard stage, but Greece and the Middle East, giving it a greater feel of antiquity and exoticism. Jonathan Fensom’s scenic design heighten the sense of both. Hemp ropes draping over the stage and a template of wood, often finely crafted, makes the stage glow with history and warmth. Kinnetia Isidore’s sweeping, quietly lavish costumes beautifully entrench the effect.
Rachelle Diedericks as Marina
But it’s the story itself and the way it’s portrayed that prove truly thrilling; and it all begins with an elaborate riddle. If you give the wrong answer you die. And if you know the answer, and are Pericles (Zach Wyatt), you die. At least that’s the intent of Antiochus (Felix Hayes), King of Antioch. The riddle points to the incestuous relationship Antiochus is having with his daughter. He can’t afford having it either known or revealed. Sensing the danger he’s in, Pericles takes flight and is set on an odyssey as Homeric as any in Greek legend.
And it’s in Hayes’s depiction of Antiochus, very early in the play, that you first gain a taste of the depth of craftsmanship the RSC cast possesses. In Wyatt’s voice, you hear the absoluteness of monarchy in all its disdaining and haughty arrogance. And in his posture and carriage, you glean his cruelty has no conscience to bridle it.
The company of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Pericles
First, Pericles flees to a place of safety, Tarsus, where a famine has taken hold. We’ve already been struck by his perception and intelligence in the way he orchestrates his escape from Antioch. By generously and instinctually offering aid and food to a starving country, we gain an appreciation for his integrity and virtue. Attributes that will be continually tested. When he resumes his journey, he’s leaving trusted friends.
Shipwrecks were a constant menace during the period and Pericles suffers one after departing Tarsus. All through the play, the way the cast inhabits the stage is meticulously orchestrated. Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster’s movement direction sometimes looks like dance in slow motion, and she uses this specific technique to simulate bodies careening on a ship during treacherous seas. It’s tremendously effective in the way it merges elegance and chaos. Washed on shore and rescued, Pericles learns the country’s king, Simonides (Christian Patterson) is holding a jousting match in honor of his daughter, Thaisa (Leah Haile). Pericles would win the tournament and win over the daughter.
Christian Patterson as Simonides
Shakespeare’s words and the actors’ performances leading up to and following Pericles’s marriage to Thaisa fill the theater with possibility. The sequence marks one of the most joyful and endearing episodes of the play. When he and his now pregnant wife set sail back to Tyre after learning that Antiochus has died, the sense of promise feels palpable. All to be dashed by a second storm, when his wife dies in childbirth and Thaisa’s coffin is set adrift.
Jacqueline Boatswain as Cerimon
Quite characteristic of Shakespeare, the plot then becomes even more intricate. Pericles and Thaisa’s infant daughter, Marina, is entrusted to his friends in Tarsus to raise. Thaisa wasn’t dead when she was committed to the depths. Her coffin is recovered, she’s revived and becomes a priestess for the goddess, Diana. By fourteen, Marina (Rachelle Diedericks) has grown into a virtuous beauty, outshining King Cleon and Queen Dionyza’s own daughter. So jealous is the Queen, she enlists assassins to kill her ward. Before they can accomplish this charge, Marina’s abducted by bandits who sell her to a brothel. It all flows with coherent step-by-step precision of the crime series 48 Hours; but this rendering is much more entrancing. The brothel’s proprietors, Pander (again, Felix Hayes) and his wife Bawd (Jacqueline Boatswain) deliver delightfully praiseworthy performances as comically jaded flesh peddlers. And when Marina, through Diedericks’ stellar interpretation of her character, proves herself too morally chaste to be ravished, we’re as convinced of the sanctity of her purity as her would-be clients.
Kel Matsena as Lysimachus and Rachelle Diedericks as Marina
One of them is the conduit who unknowingly brings Pericles and Marina, father and daughter, together. At first, they don’t know who the other is, although Pericles is notably struck at her resemblance to his deceased wife. Reflecting on this closing scene, it must be one of the most consequential and memorable experienced in quite some time. Initially, very tenuously and guardedly, they question and probe one another’s memories until they realize that parent and child are reunited. From that moment, familial tenderness has never been expressed so beautifully in writing or in speech. And it’s here where Wyatt and Diedericks both shine like exploding stars, leaving you all but aghast at their ability to so completely fill their roles.
As the visionary responsible for everything you see on stage, director Tamara Harvey has delivered a marvel of a production. Through Shakespeare’s words and characters in Pericles, she helps us gain greater clarity into ourselves and heightens our appreciation for irreplaceable bonds. We’re also introduced to a different side of Shakespeare from a world acclaimed company whose home is in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace. This is a company that joins the cosmopolitan and the traditional to create theatrical wonder.
photos by Johan Persson
Pericles
Royal Shakespeare Company
Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Courtyard Theater
Navy Pier, 800 East Grand Avenue
2 hours, 35 minutes (including intermission)
ends on December 7, 2024
for tickets, call 312.595.5600 or visit Chicago Shakes
for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago
