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Reviewed by:
  • Pericles
  • Michael W. Shurgot
Pericles Presented by Seattle Shakespeare Company at the Center House Theatre, Seattle, Washington. October 25-November 18, 2007. Directed by Sheila Daniels. Scenic design by L. B. Morse. Costumes by Heidi Ganser. Lighting by Tim Wratten. Fights by Peter Dylan O'Connor and Sheila Daniels. Music by Gretta Harley. Voice and text director Kimberly White. With James Cowan (Helicanus, Boult), Kate Czajkowski (Marina), Philip Davidson (Gower, Cerimon), Alycia Delmore (Thaisa), Alban Dennis (Cleon, Fisherman), Reginald Andre Jackson (Pericles), Rob Jansen (Leonine, Fisherman), Annie Lareau (Escanes, Bawd), Todd Jefferson Moore (Antiochus, Simonides, Pandar), Peter Dylan O'Connor (Lysimachus, Thaliard, Fisherman), Stephanie Shine (Dionyza), and Molly Tomhave (Antiochus's daughter, Lychorida).

The Seattle Shakespeare Company (SSC) is a low-budget incarnation of Peter Brook's "rough theatre," presenting high energy productions of Shakespeare's plays in the industrial-strength basement of the Seattle Center House. The principal architectural feature of this space is a set of massive pillars that are part of the foundation for the entire building and that cannot be ignored, however much an acting company might wish them away. One of the strengths of SSC has always been its creative use of these pillars which, with an imaginative leap, might resemble the twin pillars of Shakespeare's Globe, then and now. In this wonderfully energetic Pericles, set designer L. B. Morse built wooden platforms around the base of these pillars, creating seats upon which various royal figures-Antiochus, [End Page 197] Pericles, Cleon, Simonides, Lysimachus, Dionyza-sat or stood when speaking, and which came to symbolize the disparate lands of Shakespeare's sprawling romance. Center-stage was a third, movable pole wound round with ropes attached to patched sails which cast-members seized and yanked as Pericles's ship sailed for yet another port. Downstage center, at the feet of front-row spectators, Philip Davidson, an ancient, willowy Gower in an old white frock, sprinkled sand across the front edge of the stage every time he took us to another place. This simple gesture, so characteristic of SSC's creative use of its space, made our seats the coasts to which Pericles sailed and thus invited us along on his journeys. As Brook remarks, "If we iron Shakespeare into any one typography of theatre we lose the real meaning of the play-if we follow the ever-shifting devices, he will lead us through many different keys" (The Empty Space, p. 89). The sands that Gower sprinkled at our feet, as much the sands of time as of the seashore, led us willingly through the vast typography of this play.

As a few actors swept the stage, as if cleansing a holy place, others emerged from the rear carrying a huge chest. The actors gathered around the chest, and after Reginald Jackson, the play's Pericles, opened it and took out his Roman attire, other actors, accompanied by drumming and lutes, removed their costumes, crowns, and weapons to begin the play proper. From his opening dialogue with Todd Jefferson Moore's thoroughly sleazy Antiochus, whose too diligent care of his daughter quickly alerted Pericles to the king's sexual abuse of her, Jackson demonstrated the clear diction and superb rhythm that marked his generally superior performance and that anchored this most episodic of plays. Jackson was at once thoroughly gracious in entrusting his kingdom to Helicanus, humble in his charity to Cleon and Dionyza in Tarsus, and then brilliantly athletic in executing the rope tricks that won Thaisa in Pentapolis. The doubling of Todd Moore as Antiochus and Simonides, two fathers with whom Pericles must contend in his sexual quest, was theatrically clever. Moore is a richly talented actor, most adept at comic roles, who can make a perfectly deadpan remark funny. (His "What's this, what's this?" as he gazed at his crotch in 2.2 of SSC's recent Measure for Measure was hilarious.) From his sleaze as Antiochus, Moore segued brilliantly into Simonides's excessive hand-clasping, back-slapping, and ever-grinning daddy who wanted Pericles to know how much he wanted him for his son-in-law. Having Moore double as two versions of Pericles's father emphasized...

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