Mississauga Library System, July 07, 2003
Keith Garebian Reviews Pericles
By: Keith Garebian
By general critical consensus, Leon Rubin's production of PERICLES is the best Shakespeare at the festival this season. Also by the same consensus, Jonathan Goad in the title role is revealing his potential to be a major classical actor. Both triumphs are significant, the first because the play is one of Shakespeare's exotic romantic fables with such an epical scale in terms of time and locale that it is expensive to mount and represents a test of an audience's willingness to accept a trope from extremes of suffering to a "miraculous" happy ending; the second because Stratford is in serious need of a young lead actor who can ultimately follow in the footsteps of Christopher Plummer, William Hutt, Douglas Rain, and Brian Bedford.
Rubin's production emphasizes the "newness" of Shakespeare's experiment with theatrical form. It assimilates all the curious old devices of the Elizabethan stage--character types, dumb shows, episodes, supernatural events, strange rituals and ceremonies, a Chorus--in the process of striking out for new territories. The play describes its hero's journey in such a way as to suggest a virtual travelogue. It has more locales than does ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, and they are far more exotic than any in that tragedy. The locales don't simply dress up the story: they serve a dramatic function, for each is a site of some form of extreme behaviour. Rubin and his designer, John Pennoyer, have elected 16th century settings in such exotic places as North Africa, Greece, India, Japan, Thailand, and Bali. The show is adorned by a rich assortment of colour, textured fabric, and shape-- especially in the Japanese court (standing in for Pentapolis) where Pericles super-heroically defeats a number of knights in jousting.
But no matter how exquisite the beadwork or how ceremonial the banners and capes, everything depends at the last on the clarity and force of the story-telling, and Leon Rubin has found a way to narrate this sweeping adventure story and make it seem like a fairy tale with a very profoundly humanistic twist. The central plot concerns a Tyrean prince whose life unfolds in a series of afflictions. Forced to flee Antioch after guessing the sordid secret of the King and his daughter, he arrives in Tarsus, cures a famine and sets off on his adventure only to be shipwrecked on the coast of Pentapolis where he marries Thaisa, daughter of King Simonides. She, alas, appears to die in childbirth, and their daughter is eventually lost to him as well. But after another set of adventures over a span of time, his wife and daughter are restored to him.
The story is narrated by Gower, who is usually played as a medieval balladeer. In Rubin's production, he is played by Thom Marrott as a bald, mainly nude, chalky ascetic in a white loin cloth. Marriott cuts an imposing figure from the outset as he emerges from a hole in the ground. His commanding voice adds to his stage authority. The rest of the cast is uneven, with the acting tending to be broad--particularly in the brothel scene where Michael Therriault gives his familiar comic shtick of nervous hysteria--but when things count, the acting is brisk and pointed. Of particular note are Nazneen Contractor as an emotionally powerful Marina, Karen Ancheta as a warm, loving Thaisa, and Wayne Sujo (a fine prince in THE KING AND I) as a delicately sensuous Cerimon.
The best performance, rightly, is Jonathan Goad's in the title role. Goad has always had the profile and presence of a lead actor, and his strong voice has a wider range of inflections than before. He suggests more than just the usual passivity and heroic endurance of the character, investing the part with eloquence, comic shading, romantic feeling, and an admirable sense of introspective melancholy especially as Pericles ages with misfortune and grief. His reunions with Marina and Thaisa are things of rare beauty and feeling, and he acts two moments with the sort of bold, unexpected risk that reminds one of Olivier. These occur in the final act, where Goad is most convincing as an older Pericles, almost maimed by disillusionment. When he believes he is mocked by irony in a situation where a maiden is named after his long-lost daughter, he registers a searing anger. And then, when recognition dawns, he creates a heart-stopping joy which is suddenly interrupted by a flashing distraction--the miraculous appearance of Thaisa. The sudden rush of emotion is temporarily halted, the current turned in a different direction. He wearily rejects the possibility that this woman is, indeed, his missing wife, but then comes the flood of emotion that unites husband, wife, and daughter in a trinity of heavenly reconciliation. His is possibly the best Pericles ever seen.