"Tell Thy Story":Mary Zimmerman's Pericles

Staging Pericles poses particular problems because of the play's loose narrative structure, which sweeps through time and space and incorporates action ranging from incest and attempted rape to burial at sea, revival from death, and the music of the spheres. Recent productions have used one of three strategies: to read the play as romance, to impose a political concept, or to emphasize the play's deficiencies by further deconstructing it in performance. Mary Zimmerman's production at Washington's Shakespeare Theatre in 2004–2005 and at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in 2006 benefited from her long experience in adapting nondramatic narratives for the stage. For Zimmerman, Pericles is a romance satisfying our wish that tragic losses be restored, and its structural "quirkiness" is a delight, providing opportunities for the creation of suggestive images and symbols. Especially notable was Zimmerman's solution to the persistent problem of the expository choruses, which used a small book passed among the players and read aloud by various characters, allowing expansion of the dumb shows and easy transitions between narration and action. Zimmerman's production, with its emphasis on text and story, contrasted with recent political readings by Adrian Noble for the Royal Shakespeare Company and by Yokio Ninagawa at London's National Theatre, both of which nevertheless allowed the emotional force of the play to emerge.