Theater Review by Ron Fassler . . . .
Amongst his thirty-eight plays, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is something of a redheaded stepchild in Shakespeare’s canon. Its authorship is not entirely the Bard’s and it was omitted from the First Folio in 1623, the collection of his plays first published seven years after his death. Scholars commonly agree that what truly belongs to Shakespeare begins with scene nine, which chronicles the reunion of Pericles and his long-lost daughter Marina. In the Fiasco Theater production, currently playing at Classic Stage Company, it comes as little surprise that it is this portion of the piece, in the latter part of the play, when Pericles comes to life. Sadly, like the storm portrayed in its first half, things are somewhat underwater and a bit garbled prior to being treated by some genuine poetry in its second.
The eminent Shakespeare academic Harold Bloom called Pericles “very peculiar in genre,” and he wasn’t kidding. It’s not quite a history play, though there once was a King Pericles, a Greek general who led his army during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. It’s not really a magical fantasia like The Tempest, even though a character is brought back from the dead. And it’s not tragic enough for a tragedy nor funny enough for a comedy. So what is it? It’s considered a romance play, but is it really? And why should it be done 400 years later if it’s generally acknowledged to contain just 827 lines attributed to Shakespeare?
It would be lovely to report the Fiasco Theater provides answers to those questions, but it hasn’t sufficiently succeeded. Its nine-member cast play all the parts, with four actors sharing the role of Pericles (one of them a woman). There’s no real reason for it and doesn’t add anything except a bit of confusion upon the first handoff. The staging techniques are familiar to anyone who’s been seeing Shakespeare over the last fifty years, ever since Peter Brook astonished with his Royal Shakespeare adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which, after triumphing in London, played in Manhattan and Brooklyn in 1971 (I was fortunate enough as a fourteen-year-old to experience this once-in-a-lifetime production). Staged within a white box, it was startling in its creative imagination: spinning plates, trapezes, stilts—a circus-like atmosphere, but oh-so-true to the words, conjuring images I’ve never forgotten. It has prompted so many similarly styled takes on otherwise rusty classical theater, that it becomes harder and harder to be original after so many iterations.
Ben Steinfeld, Fiasco’s co-artistic director, adapted, wrote the music and lyrics, plays a few roles, and directed this Pericles. I saw him do a fine job as Franklin Shepard in Fiasco’s 2019 Merrily We Roll Along, re-conceived with a small cast and done with the approval of Stephen Sondheim. Fiasco’s core group all met as students at Brown University and the company is still charged with a youthful go-for-broke sensibility, though a few are now turning a bit gray.
The use of music throughout this Pericles is performed by all the actors themselves, banging on the props available, and singing acapella. Thankfully, this is opposed to walking around John Doyle-style, hauling around instruments like tubas and triangles. I was reminded of another freewheeling Shakespeare adaptation from fifty years ago, the Public Theater’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was scored by Galt (Hair) MacDermot and co-authored by the show’s director Mel Shapiro and John Guare. That version went all-in on turning the play into a musical—perhaps that would have made this Pericles sing a bit more. After all, much of the poetry in the play isn’t Shakespeare, so it can use all the help it can get.
Of the actors, I particularly enjoyed the contributions of the avuncular Andy Grotelueschen, whose kindly and exuberant Simonides is a highlight. As Thaisa, wife of Pericles, Jessie Austrian speaks the verse as well as you can wish for and manages the difficult task of projecting both an ethereal and down-to-earth quality. And Emily Young’s Marina is almost solely responsible for carrying the second half with stealth conviction. I’m sorry to report I didn’t find any of the four actors portraying Pericles particularly compelling. There’s no credit for the minimal scenic design, which works well in the CSC space (probably a group effort), and the costumes and lighting by Ashley Rose Horton and Mextly Couzin, respectively, are simple and practical.
Fiasco Theater’s ambition is to be applauded, though perhaps their efforts could have been put to better use with a better piece of material. It may be sacrilege to cast off a Shakespeare play (well, a third of a play), but if a company is dead set on producing Pericles in the 21st century, it needs a stronger case for it than this one.
Pericles. Through March 24 at Classic Stage Company (136 East 13th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues). www.classicstage.org
Photos: Austin Ruffer
