Writer: William Shakespeare
Adapter and Director: Kelly Hunter
One of Shakespeare’s less well-known, and indeed contested works, Pericles is however so full of ludicrous plot that it makes the perfect show to adapt for accessible performances. Flute Theatre’s 100-minute production certainly makes the most of its large emotional register, the elaborate storytelling and the panto canvas on which Shakespeare creates this tale. At the Riverside Studios for a week before moving to other venues, director Kelly Hunter’s inventive production is rich in technique.
A play that begins with incest and ends in celestial intention, Pericles includes shipwrecks, hasty marriages, pirate kidnaps, wicked stepmothers and concealed identities. The titular Pericles and his daughter Marina are at the will of fate for much of the story and the path to truth proves a winding one.
Also adapted by Hunter, this is a very neat truncation of a quite elaborate play that skilfully retains its key passages, characters and sequence of events, while Hunter also looks to honour the text by utilising its language and even a sense of the soliloquies. This Pericles is a whistle-stop tour of various events but one that manages to give new life to its source material to better serve a more mixed intended audience without fully jettisoning the Shakespeare in this Shakespeare play.
Most notably, Hunter’s production makes very good use of the opportunities to introduce dance and movement as a way to explore place and cultural interaction. For a play with a large geographical shape, Hunter’s production distinguishes between them with choreography and sometimes acrobatic display – most notably when the clearly nervous Pericles meets his wife-to-be and leans to join the exuberant celebrations in a wonderful cast number.
To perform a piece on this scale with only seven actors and two musicians is impressive with the majority playing multiple roles. It means that experiences are often painted in quite bold colours with lots of wailing grief and little chance to delve beneath the surface to find softer tones and meanings within everyone’s motivation, but it will certainly make activities clear to a mixed audience and it by no means takes away from the impact of the conclusion, which still feels appropriately significant.
As Pericles, Joshua Welch has only the one role to play across the whole of the character’s adult life from spirited young adventurer to (briefly) married man and then prematurely aged woeful elder. Meanwhile, Natasha Haward plays the innocence and propriety of the leading female roles as Marina and her mother, while Charlie Archer’s Chorus brings shape and gravitas to a sprawling story effectively peopled by Catherine Kay, Sergio Maggiolo, Maria Mercedes Maresca, Oliver McLellan, Paula Rodriguez and Juan Sanchez Plaza.
Craig West’s lighting is particularly evocative in the small semi-circular performance space, creating so many tones that speak to the emotional pace of the show as well as its various locations, while Alice Hallifax’s Middle Eastern contemporary costumes are used to create instant character transformation. With a second version of this production being performed simultaneously for audience members with autism, Hunter and her team have thought carefully about this adaptation and the needs of those they hope will see it; they succeed in thoroughly entertaining them.
Runs until 12 November 2022 and is at the Old Market Brighton on 16 November
