✭✭✭✩✩

by William Shakespeare, directed by John Wood

Royal Bank Festival of Classics, Coronation Park, Oakville

July 18-August 11, 2001

Gower: “And what ensues in this fell storm

               Shall for itself itself perform”

In this the sixth season of the Royal Bank Festival of Classics, John Wood, who directed the company's inaugural production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", returns to direct one of Shakespeare's least-often produced plays, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre".  This is only the third professional production of the play in Canada in the last 50 years.  Both previous productions were at Stratford--Jean Gascon's in 1973 and Richard Ouzounian's in 1986.  Wood's highly enjoyable production makes one wonder yet again why this play should be so neglected.

Though not included in the First Folio, "Pericles" was written about 1607-08 and judging from the frequency of its reprinting became one of Shakespeare's most popular works.  It is the first of a series of Shakespeare's later plays now known, due to the efforts of Northrop Frye, as the Romances.  These include "The Winter's Tale", "Cymbeline", "The Tempest" and, even less-often produced, "The Two Noble Kinsmen".  In the form of old-fashioned adventure tales, all of these deal with the themes of time and fortune and portray the natural cycle of birth, death and rebirth.  All include scenes of divine intervention and may be said to illustrate Hamlet's view that "There is a Providence that shapes our ends".    

"Pericles" is an epic tale set in several locations around the eastern Mediterranean.  As if to highlight the fantastical nature of the story and the inability of the stage to depict it, Shakespeare makes extensive use of a chorus just as he had earlier in "Henry V".  We follow Pericles' journey from youth to old age, through good luck and ill, meeting and losing his wife Thaisa, witnessing the birth during a storm of their daughter Marina and losing her though mischance.  All three struggle to remain virtuous despite great odds and the play concludes with moving, unlooked for reunions.

The Royal Bank Festival of Classics makes no use of a fixed stage or a back wall.  Rather, bleachers accommodating about 300 people are set up around an ancient willow with a view of the rest of the park and the nearby shore of Lake Ontario.  In 1996 Wood picked this site for Shakespeare rather than the park's existing bandshell.  For a play like "Pericles", that involves so many sea voyages and where the power of nature is so often embodied in tempests and shipwrecks, this natural setting could not be more perfect. 

Designer Michael Gianfrancesco's set is really nothing more than a wooden boardwalk that circles round the tree, rising up behind it and descending again after crossing a small brook.  It thus neatly and simply suggests the cyclical themes of the play.  A wooden platform used only at the beginning of the play to represent Antioch and never used again seems unnecessary.  His costume design situates the action somewhere in the 1930s or '40s, but the camouflage suits for the guards at Antioch and Antiochus' "oriental" costume seem out of synch with the rest of the design.  Michael Kruse well manages the transition from natural to artificial lighting but saves his more magical effects for the miraculous occurrences at the close.

Director John Wood makes excellent use of such an open playing area.  When Pericles flees Antioch for guessing the king's heinous secret, Wood has the actor run from the wooden circle about a hundred yards into the distance.  When two fishermen enter he has them walk with their nets from the lakeshore up to the circle.  In Mytilene when we first meet the bawd and the pander, Wood has them drive up in an old pickup truck and play their first scene lit solely by its headlights.  Later when they come back they pull up past the circle with a portable wooden bordello in tow.  At the end we glimpse the Temple of Diana, where Thaisa has taken refuge, in the distance beyond the willow.  This constant breaking of the boundary of the wooden circle is exciting because it suggests a world beyond the immediate confines of the playing area, just as the play looks to a world beyond the actions it portrays.   

Shakespeare's chorus is the 14th-century poet John Gower, whose "Confessio Amantis" is the primary source for the plot.  John Wood's innovation is to remove any references Gower makes to himself and to have the actor Patrick Garrow also play Pericles' trusted friend Helicanus with no change of costume or demeanor.  This device may decrease the distancing that Shakespeare intended, but having the story told by someone intimately involved in it increases the sense of immediacy.  Garrow's clear diction and sense of authority makes him well suited as our trusted guide.

On the particular evening I saw the show, clear diction was absolutely essential since a strong wind out of the northeast swept from the lake unimpeded over the playing area.  On the one hand this made the frequent allusions to wind and wave in the text extremely vivid.  On the other the actors had to use more effort than usual just to be heard, necessarily resulting in a loss of subtlety in the performances. 

Nevertheless, a number of actors did very well despite the trying circumstances.  Jonathan Eliot gives a fine performance in the title role, more believable perhaps as the hopeful youth than the embittered old man, but still able to bring a sense of wonder to the two climactic recognition scenes.  Krista Sutton gives a lively intelligence to the young Thaisa and grace and dignity to her mature self.  Deborah Hay is able to make Marina's virtue seem so natural that it could indeed disarm the lustful.  Melee Hutton is strong as Marina's enemy Dionyza, who uses reason as a cover for evil.  Chick Reid's is excellent in two roles that could not be more different--the  loving nurse who cares for the infant Marina and the decrepit bawd who wants to see her deflowered as soon as possible.  Michael McLachlan plays several roles but is best as Lysimachus, Marina's would-be ravisher, converted by her virtue to her cause.    

Among the others, Michael Krek does not have enough presence as the vicious Antiochus and makes a caricature of his role as a pander, yet he strikes just the right note of sympathy as a fisherman willing to help Pericles in his misery. John Fitzgerald Jay does not distinguish fully enough Cleon, a king with compromised morality, from the virtuous king Simonides.   Andrew Penner (Cerimon), Erin MacKinnon (Hesperides/Philoten), Cyrus Lane (Escanes/Leonine) and Blaine Bray (Boult) round out the cast.

My favourite production of this play remains the 1986 production at Stratford with Geraint Wyn Davies as Pericles and Renee Rogers as a singing Gower.   The production as a whole was more controlled and at the conclusion reached greater depths of emotion.  Yet, this production has enough good qualities, especially in John Wood's brilliant use of the natural setting, that anyone interested in experiencing a play by Shakespeare that should be far better known need not hesitate.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Jonathan Eliot.