PERICLES. To 13 July.
RSC
PERICLES
Prince of Tyre
by William Shakespeare
The Roundhouse To 13 July 2002
Mon-Sat 7.15 Mats10,13 1.30pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval
TICKETS 0870 609 1110
Review Timothy Ramsden 8 July
Visual flair and understanding make for a fine production, with the RSC's Roundhouse space finally coming into its own.Adrian Noble skims through Pericles' first two acts, setting up the idea of wandering, and bringing us speedily to act three, where Shakespeare's contribution to the script begins. Ideas about a modern Shakespeare writing soaps or sitcoms are gfenerally simplistic, but this play has a Hollywood-friendly scenario. Murder plots, child-cruelty, pirates, sex go alongside the morally-homing factors of good neighbours, love and purity in a brothel. Even the pirates prevent the heroine's death: how much more Hollywood can you get?
And the season's staging style a promontory thrusting into the circular space, which is surrounded by a walkway - works best with this Pericles. It's a story of constant movement, repeated separations, expressed in the wide distances between raised spaces and the use of the walkway for urgent messages.
Then too, the central island begins and ends the evening. At first a crowd collects, an uncoordinated assembly of listeners to a tale, or maybe of characters in search of a story. And these spread apart until, magically and unsentimentally at the end, they loop together, a long line of relationships established and rediscovered.
Noble expresses the poles of human experience through the play's currents of good and evil: this, in fast action, gives Pericles its energy. And Shaun Davey's score, with its brass-heavy exotic twinges (matching the carpeted floor) reinforces the narrative drive. As the wanderer finds love the wife Thaisa who will give birth to Marina just as Pericles loses both at sea - Davey introduces a softer tone in a song of love and homecoming over the years which flings its melodic arm across two centuries to another of drama's great searchers for love and identity, in recalling the song of Peer Gynt's Solveig.
Ray Fearon's Prince is forceful if inclined to rant at top volume. Lauren Ward's wife is too neutral, but Kananu Kirimi is discreetly forceful, in a performance that offsets her fine, more showy Ariel. A number of strong performances whack the story along in a production that recognises its at times risible coincidences and instant changes, yet makes clear its underlying mythic depth.
Gower: Brian Protheroe
Pericles: Ray Fearon
King AntiochusPandar: Geff Francis
His Daughter/Lychorida/Prostitute: Sirine Saba
Thaliard/Lord/Sick Lord: James Staddon
Messenger/Fisherman: Felix Dexter
Helicanus: Roger Frost
Lord/Pirate/Servant: James Hyland
Cleon: Keith Bartlett
Dionyza: Myra Lucretia Taylor
Marina: Kananu Kirimi
Leonine/Lord: James Telfer
Pirate/Knight/Sailor: Dan Crute
Servant/Gentleman: James Garnon
Fishermen: Jerome Willis
Fisherman/Sailor/Gentleman: Dylan Charles
King Simonides: Rolf Saxon
Thaisa: Lauren Ward
Marshall/Pirate/Servant: Jami Quarrell
Knight/Sailor: Alan Turkington
Ladies: Fiona Lait, Olwen May
Shipmaster/Lysimachus: Tom Beard
Cerimon/Knight: Jude Akuwudike
Philemon/Lady/Nun: Gracy G Goldman
Boult/Knight: Simon Gregor
Bawd/Lady/Nun: Olwen May
Diana, Lady, Prostitute: Fiona Lait
Director: Adrian Noble
Designer: Peter McKintosh
Lighting: Jean Kalman
Sound: Mic Pool
Music: Shaun Davey
Music Director: John Woolf
Movement: Sue Lefton
Fights: Malcolm Ransom
Dialect Coach: Charmian Hoare
Company voice work: Lyn Darnley, Andrew Wade
Aerial Adviser: Gavin Marshall
2002-07-10 09:44:21