PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
  Shakespeare's Globe (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), London SE1

Opened 25 November, 2015
***

Outgoing Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole’s revival really begins to pay off in the second half: that is, in the portion of the play written by Shakespeare. The authorship of the first two acts is increasingly ascribed (including for this production) to the deservedly unremembered George Wilkins. That first segment of the story simply buffets the title character hither and yon around the eastern Mediterranean of the classical era – Sheila Reid’s narrator Gower has to explain why all these different nationalities are shown speaking the same language. Pericles endures first a failed marriage suit (his intended turning out to be incestuously involved with her father), then voluntary exile, shipwreck and a knightly tournament which yields him a proper bride. This episodic phase is simply one thing after another. There is no sense of shape to the story, nor can James Garnon despite his best efforts succeed in finding depth in the character of Pericles.

Shakespeare takes up the quill in time for the next shipwreck (honestly, Pericles was an extreme weather warning on two legs) which sunders the prince from his wife and newborn daughter Marina. After the interval Marina, now a young woman, escapes murder by being abducted by pirates and is sold to a brothel, where she proves so virtuous and persuasive that she remains intacta until a ship from Tyre arrives in the harbour… at which point we slip into one of those complex reunion routines so typical of Shakespeare’s late romances.

This is where Dromgoole brings heft to the proceedings. Rather than follow the usual saccharin-saintly option, Jessica Baglow’s Marina seems mildly to moderately depressive. Perhaps this is the common note which enables her to communicate with the now-near-catatonic Pericles; Garnon, in turn, now cuts such a credibly desolate figure that not even reunion with Marina seems likely to save him – more than once he physically collapses. Nor do director and cast try to stifle the absurdity of some of the deadpan lines, and Dennis Herdman, Kirsty Woodward and Fergal McElherron revel in inflating the comedy of the brothel scenes. The production doesn’t solve the problems of dual authorship, but the bits that are worth staging in the first place are distinctly worth watching here.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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