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This reading of Pericles aimed to cultivate collaborative networks between local and international scholars, students, theatre practitioners, and the wider public. As far as records can determine, the staged reading was only the second ever performance of Pericles in Ireland and the first ever performance of the play in Munster.
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Director Jung-ung Yang emphasized the contemporaneity of the play with modern and cosmopolitan costumes, music and dances. The imagistic stage was very impressive, too. The 30m depth stage covered with 50t sand created the image of sea and island. The gigantic statue of Diana's head, which was laid down sideway on the stage left, expressed the precarious deity. The huge images of a compass and a moon, which were alternatively projected on the back screen of the stage, gave a proper background to Pericles, who wanders from place to place. Gower, who led the whole play as a narrator, was transformed into old Pericles.
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“Four actors race to perform Shakespeare's greatest hits. You, the audience, play Shakespearean BINGO to choose what scene comes next and keep the actors on their toes. Call out favorites such as Romeo & Juliet's balcony bliss, Lady Macbeth's blood cleansing sleepwalk or one of our more “liberally interpreted” alternatives. 30 scenes will be performed in 60 minutes...or someone gets a pie in the face!” (description from company website)
Read MorePericles is a risk-taker. He realizes that whatever answer he gives to a riddle will get him killed. So begins an epic journey of ambitious risks, great rewards, and big falls for the Prince of Tyre. Pericles marries, has a daughter, and is separated from both along the way; shipwrecks always seem to happen at the darndest times. All three of them lead strange, marvelous lives and travel convoluted pathways to the end, when they’re miraculously reunited.
Read MorePericles is a comedy with elements of thriller and adventure, a fairy tale equally relating to children and to adults. When Pericles brings salvation (in form of corn sacks) to Tarsus, there starts a Neapolitan song and dance, with the actors basking in flour and making pastry, resulting in pizza that they actually share with the audience. Gower, the narrator, tells us what will follow and summarises what preceded in witty rhymes and interacts with the actors, sometimes choosing a wrong one for the given role. Like a comedy of humours, with the Tarsus royal couple elegantly mocked and Helicanus, the sage of Tyre, resting on the laurels of his old reputation, senile and pessimistic as ever, not having anything smart to say and actually do his job (advise Pericles). When Thaissa rises from the dead, in Diana’s temple, everybody faints with amazement and then they are impatient to stand up, waiting for Gower’s endless speech to finish and finally kicking him off of the stage. Marina is the torch of the whole play, bright and quick, clever and outspoken, not meek and tender like a typical Shakespearean heroine.
Read MoreCelebrating Cultures present a new production of William Shakespeare’s Pericles in a new translation by Salvador Oliva and Angel Luis Pujante.
Pericles will use the context of Cuba itself, finding home grown cultural equivalents – a boxing tournament replaces knights in armour, a Santeria priest heals Pericles’ wife who is thought to have died. The play will be intertwined with Cuban vocal melodies and Caribbean percussion.
Pericles, one of Shakespeare’s less typical plays, and originally set in the Mediterranean, transplants effortlessly to the Caribbean, from one sea to another where Pericles is shipwrecked. A myriad surreptitious coincidences draw in the audience to follow the twists and turns of the story, each new scene a surprise, contrasting vividly with the previous one.
Pericles takes part in two contests to win a bride, believes his wife to have died at sea in childbirth and that his daughter, 14 years later, has also died only to be reunited with both of them. Pirates sell his daughter to a brothel and his wife isn’t really dead. And so it goes, suspension of disbelief continually hanging by a thread in this fast paced, twisting tale of great loss and greater redemption filled with warriors, assassins, pirates, fishermen and whores.
Shakespeare's momentous tale and unforgettable characters combined with Cuba’s political, religious and unforgiving passion couldn’t fit a better Elizabethan glove.
Read More“Shakespeare’s thrilling and epic tale of adventure, shipwreck and romance. When Pericles uncovers the King’s dark secret he is forced to flee his Kingdom and navigate the roaring seas. Brought to life with over 20 original songs and an evocative new setting – a dive bar at the end of the world – this production will be an exhilarating and mystical event you will not want to miss!” –blurb from the Two River Theater Company website
Read More“A salt and pepper pot for the king and queen. A vase for the prince. A matchbox for the servant. A toilet roll tube for the Innkeeper. A water bottle for the messenger.
In Complete Works six performers create condensed versions of each and every Shakespeare play, comically and intimately retelling them, using a collection of everyday objects as stand-ins for the characters on the one-metre stage of an ordinary table top."
“Pericles tells a surging adventure story—a hero wanders Odysseus-like through the world of the Mediterranean—and climaxes with events that are seemingly miraculous.” –description from the Theatre for a New Audience website
Read MorePericles, a tale of shipwreck, loss, and reunion, was one Shakespeare’s most popular plays in his own time.
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This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
