For reasons of familiarity to tourists and usefulness for exam students, Shakespeare’s plays are unequally performed. In 2023, there was a Macbeth most months, but Pericles, a 1608 late romance, was last staged by the RSC 18 years ago.
The main reason is various doubts about the text. Pericles was omitted from the canon-defining 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. And, while the RSC still loyally gives its house dramatist solo credit, at least the first two acts of the play are by scholarly consensus attributed to George Wilkins, a minor writer and major inn-keeper. (Some say his business was a brothel, which may make Shakespeare’s setting of the fourth act in a bawdy house an in-joke.)
Yet despite its dodgy provenance, the play has clear thematic spines. There are three father-daughter relationships: the incestuous liaison of the King of Antioch with his child drives Pericles, Prince of Tyre on an odyssey around Greek kingdoms in which he marries a princess of Pentapolis, with whom he has a daughter whose death and life drive the miraculous/ridiculous denouement. In a more serious patterning, the hero’s travels span six types of government – clownish, tyrannical, doddering, godly (choose your modern equivalents), interim (as in Bangladesh now) and benevolent (we’ll get back to you).
Tamara Harvey, in her first production as RSC co-artistic director, cannot disguise the play’s peculiarities but proves its beauties to be equally deep and its political intelligence acute. In the context of the leadership contest, Alfred Enoch’s title performance tantalisingly shows a candidate rare in today’s nations – youthful, humorous, smart, commanding, supremely eloquent. He should have his pick of Shakespearean kings and princes. Christian Patterson’s Simonides of Pentapolis, a corrupt buffoon, finding a laugh even in a line as simple as “Unclasp! Unclasp!”, invokes one or two current figures without exciting the lawyers.
Harvey removes the original’s framing rhymed narration from John Gower (the poet who popularised the Pericles tale) and reallocates it rewritten to an actor whose character is revealed only in the fourth act. Rachelle Diedericks’ Marina matches Enoch’s clarity and radiance and the eventual scenes between them are at least as moving as a more celebrated family reunion in The Winter’s Tale.
The text’s frequent reference to “dumb shows” lead movement director Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster to deliver lovely choreographic tableaux for duos and groups. Pericles could not have been done better but even this brainy, graceful staging can not admit the play to the core canon.
At the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 21 September
