PRINCE OF TIDES

Picaresque Pericles a seaworthy adventure

Santa Cruz Shakespeare takes a big chance with its third offering of the season, Pericles. A lesser known Shakespeare play without the marquee value of, say, A Midsummer Night's Dream, its hyperactive storyline also makes it a challenge to stage. Fortunately, director Charles Pasternak has a savvy enough grasp of stagecraft to keep the unruly plot on track, while showcasing its best moments of comedy and poignant revelation.

Casting the always interesting Paige Lindsey White as protagonist Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is another intriguing choice. The character is not re-imagined as female (like Helen Mirren as "Prospera," in the 2010 movie of The Tempest). Rather, White's Pericles is a universal Everyperson, responding to the extremes of the plot with the kind of humanity and spirit we can all relate to.

 

And extreme they are. Prince Pericles sails to the neighboring kingdom of Antiochus (Corey Jones) to woo his daughter (Allie Pratt). But when he discovers they are having an incestuous relationship, Pericles flees, pursued by an assassin. His odyssey next takes him to the famine-ravage kingdom of Cleon (also Jones) a Dionyza (Desiree Rogers), where he delivers life-saving food, before he is shipwrecked in a storm at sea.

 

Pericles washes ashore in the kingdom of genial King Simonides (Jones yet again), who is holding a jousting tournament to win the hand of his daughter, Thaisa (charmingly eager innocent Lily Kops). Pericles is victorious over five other knights and weds Thaisa. Later, the pregnant Thaisa gives birth to a daughter during another storm at sea, but seemingly dies in childbirth. 

 

White and Kops: romantic intrigue

 Pericles takes the infant daughter he names Marina back to Cleon and Dionyza to raise, then returns to the sea to grieve. The second half of the story concerns Marina, now a young woman (also Pratt), captured by pirates and sold into a brothel, where she confounds the madame (a now brash, belligerent Kops) by talking all of her potential clients out of ravishing her.

 

Because so much of this storyline happens offstage, presented as hearsay, including juicy stuff like jousting and piracy, it's sometimes difficult for the audience to become fully engaged in the complicated story. But when scenes are pared down to a few characters whose motives we clearly understand, it all works beautifully, thanks to its extremely versatile and energetic cast.

 

Jones' regal bearing as all three very different kings is impressive throughout, but he has the most fun as the expansive Simonides, covertly matchmaking for Pericles and Thaisa. Jones, White and Kops shine in a skillfully directed, very funny pas de trois as the wily king tries reverse psychology, pretending to forbid a match between Pericles and Thaisa that he's secretly determined to arrange.

 

M L Roberts excels as a furtive assassin, a philosophical fisherman, and a  good-hearted servant at the bawdy house who helps spirit Marina away. Rogers' noble, compassionate queen, Dionyza, convincingly descends into murderous jealousy. Jono Eiland is engaging as both a studious alchemist who revives Thaisa, and a would-be assassin with a moral compass. Mike Ryan lends humor and gravity as both Hellicanus, Pericles' trusted advisor, and the rowdy Pander, who runs the brothel. 

 

 Highlight of the show is a terrific centerpiece number when the knights vying for Thasia's hand perform a percussive dance of male machismo in the style of a Maori tribal ritual. (Big kudos to Choreographer Izzy Pedego.) And after all their exhausting adventures, Pericles' final reunion with his lost wife and daughter concludes the tale on a grace note of reconciliation and redemption, in which White, in particular, is profoundly touching.

 

The George Wilkins listed as a collaborator on the play was a London pamphleteer who wrote a prose version of the medieval poem by John Gower that inspired Shakespeare. It's thought that Wilkins contributed to the first two acts of the play, which may explain why the first couple of exposition scenes are a little hard to get into. At the court of Antiochus, from the actors' body language, and the word "incest" repeatedly flung about, we get what's going on, but the untrained ear (okay, mine), can't discern whatever verbal clue it is that alerts Pericles to the situation and sends him fleeing for his life.

 

 Shakespeare wrote Gower into the play as an onstage narrator, explaining the action. But Pasternak dispenses with Gower, handing the narration duties over to the ensemble, filling in the busy plot so the audience can keep up. 

 

They make excellent use of the smart set by Michael Schweikardt and Bennet Seymour, prowling around the catwalks and revolving staircases, which variously become palaces, seashores, tournament fields, and storm-wracked ships at sea. Erin Reed Carter's vivid costumes are most impressive in the gemstone-colored royal finery, and the quilted, samurai-like robes of the jousters.

 

Pericles may not be Shakespeare's best-remembered play, but Pasternak and company make it a memorable theatrical event.

 

Pericles plays in repertory at the Audrey Stanley Grove in DeLaveaga Park through August 30.

Photos by Kevin Lohman and Shmuel Thaler