In latter years Cheek By Jowl’s productions – whether in English, French or Russian – have struck me as very much to be admired, but rather less to be loved. Declan Donnellan’s concept of depicting characters’ relationships in terms of their relative positions onstage is greatly illuminating in one respect, naggingly schematic in another. The company’s latest production with its French ensemble, a revival of Shakespeare’s Pericles (they make a point of jointly crediting George Wilkins, whom scholarly consensus now holds to be significant co-author) shows few signs of this approach, and is consequently their freshest work in ages.

We begin in a Persian-blue hospital room. A pair of orderlies check and turn an unconscious man and remake his bed. (These poor chaps remake that bed several times in the course of each 100-minute continuous performance; no wonder they’re so skilled at hospital corners.) Then the action begins. Périclès may be understood to be comatose, delirious, raving... it doesn’t matter, though it’s worth noting that in the tournament to win the hand of princess Thaïsa, his “armour” is a straitjacket. The salient point is that what he and we see are visions acted out by the orderlies, doctor and a trio of (family?) visitors who at other times sit quietly across the room, leafing through magazines.

Even he himself takes multiple roles: at various times Christophe Grégoire slips from Périclès into the part of Cléon, governor of Tarsus to whom Périclès entrusts the upbringing of his daughter Marina, and the Pander who runs the brothel in Mytilene into which she is sold. Valentine Catzéflis has an emotional range which makes the same clothing ensemble – sloppy fawn cardigan, mini-skirt, black tights – appear both vampish as the incestuous daughter of king Antiochus and demure as Marina.

The number of characters and locations mentioned here indicate the narrative and geographical sprawl of the play. It’s an achievement in itself that such strong editing here does not create further confusion; instead, the consistent hospital focus keeps us engaged with Périclès’ real or imagined tribulations and his palpable emotional volatility, manifested both in his own person and in Marina as a kind of anima. This isn’t CbJ’s usual route to clarity, but it is, powerfully, the same destination.

Written for the Financial Times.