The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.468  Monday, 1 December 2014

 

From:        Hardy Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:        November 25, 2014 at 9:14:09 AM EST

Subject:    Shakespeare's ‘Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' at the Public 

 

[Editor’s Note: This review is from The New York Times. –Hardy]

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/theater/shakespeares-pericles-prince-of-tyre-at-the-public-theater.html?_r=0

Intrigue in the Middle East, This Time From Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s ‘Pericles, Prince of Tyre,’ at the Public Theater 

 

By Alexis Soloski

Nov. 24, 2014

 

Last summer, the radio host Ira Glass prompted a Twitter tempest when he attended the Public Theater’s lackluster “King Lear” and tweeted: “No stakes, not relatable. I think I’m realizing: Shakespeare sucks.”

 

Maybe Mr. Glass saw the wrong Shakespeare play.

 

The theater’s Mobile Shakespeare Unit has just returned “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” to Lafayette Street, having toured the production to homeless shelters, community centers and correctional facilities — reaching audiences who can’t spend a day standing in line for Shakespeare in the Park tickets. Few Bardolators would argue that “Pericles” is the equal of “Lear” in poetry or power. It has a clunky, outmoded framing device, and its plot, which involves multiple shipwrecks, an unlikely resurrection and some extremely polite brothel customers, is tough to respect. But this 100-minute show (about half the length of “Lear”) is feisty and involving. And while I’ve never believed that great art has to be “relatable,” the audience members who watched the final act of “Pericles” with tears in their eyes seemed to find it so.

 

The director, Rob Melrose, has assembled a diverse eight-member cast, costumed in attractive neutrals, to play some 40 roles and provide the backing music, too. On a turquoise carpet, with the audience on all sides, they dash from Antioch to Ephesus, Tarsus to Tyre, and lands beyond, as Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Raffi Barsoumian) loses and recovers a wife and a child.

 

Mr. Melrose’s quick-march approach sacrifices nuance (and, frankly, a lot of poetry) to speed and lucidity. Even in this dizzying, genre-hopping play, with its elaborate leaps in time and place, the locations and relationships are always clear. The production is economical and modestly inventive, with wooden stools subbing for jousting horses, a silken sheet for billowing waves, a table for a bed and a bier, the carpet for pretty much everything else.

 

You might see grander Shakespeare, more provocative Shakespeare, more complicated Shakespeare, more lyrical Shakespeare, but you’re unlikely to see a clearer, swifter production. In brief: It doesn’t suck. Someone get Mr. Glass a ticket.

 

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