Tony nominee Andy Grotelueschen ensures everyone has a blast at Fiasco’s Pericles at Classic Stage (photo by Austin Ruffer)
PERICLES
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Through March 24, $87
classicstage.org
fiascotheater.com
Fiasco Theater is not afraid to tackle difficult, challenging, lesser-known Elizabethan works, reviving them with its unique combination of joy and ingenuity. The company’s inaugural production was William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, in 2009, and it has since staged Measure for Measure, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the more familiar Twelfth Night while also presenting Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods and Merrily We Roll Along.
Last spring Fiasco teamed up with Red Bull Theater for a rollicking version of Francis Beaumont’s 1607 comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle. During the pandemic, Red Bull took a deep dive into the Bard’s Pericles — its inaugural show, in 2003 — featuring readings and discussions with actors and literary experts, placing the work, which has been rarely performed in New York, save for Trevor Nunn’s entertaining adaptation at TFANA in 2016, into contemporary context.
The fearless Fiasco has now breathed new life into Pericles, a mess of a play — not published in the First Folio — that meanders and wobbles through an Iliad/Odyssey-style adventure; the first two acts were most likely written by pamphleteer and innkeeper George Wilkins, author of the 1608 novel The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prynce of Tyre, excerpts of which appear in Fiasco’s version.
As the audience enters Classic Stage’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater, members of the cast greet them with friendly chatter. The set is spare: an open space with wooden boxes of various sizes, including a coffin, that arrive and depart, carried by the actors, serving as chairs, benches, and ships. Hanging across the back is a cream-colored sheet of sackcloth with three doorways cut into it. The episodic stories follow Pericles as he escapes Tyre in Phoenicia, sails to Tarsus, gets shipwrecked in Pentapolis, and eventually decides to return home. Lovely songs appear here and then, offering a respite from the nearly incomprehensible plot.
Jessie Austrian and Emily Young play multiple roles in unique Shakespeare adaptation (photo by Austin Ruffer)
In order to gain the hand of the daughter (Emily Young) of King Antiochus (Noah Brody), Pericles must solve a riddle that will lead to his death whether he answers it correctly or not. Helped by the loyal Helicanus (Paul L. Coffey), he heads out to sea. On his trip he marries Thaisa (Jessie Austrian), daughter of Simomedes (Andy Grotelueschen), king of Pentapolis, and they have a daughter, Marina; Thaisa apparently dies in childbirth, while Pericles is later told that Marina, who he left in the care of Cleon (Devin E. Haqq) and Dionyza (Tatiana Wechsler), the king and queen of Tarsus, is dead as well. Years later, the very alive Marina (Young) is almost murdered before being captured by pirates and brought to a brothel in Mytilene run by a Bawd (Austrian), who decides to sell Marina’s virginity to the governor, Lysimachus (Paco Tolson). It all builds to an emotional, powerful conclusion.
Pericles was popular in its time, but one of the main rubs against it is how the chapters don’t flow into one another smoothly; they feel like individual short stories tossed together, as if amid a storm, with themes ranging from incest and hunger to jealousy and grief. But Fiasco has done a terrific job linking the disparate scenes, or at least as much as humanly possible; another achievement is trimming it down to two hours with intermission.
The sections are introduced by Gower, engagingly portrayed by director Ben Steinfeld, who narrates the tale, playing rather folky acoustic guitar and speaking directly to the audience. Early on, he sings, “Now Pericles, the prince of Tyre, / To honor’s grace he did aspire. / But life did send him endless trials, / As he sailed the sea for countless miles. / And with each test or twist of fate / He became a different person straight!”
Pericles’s growth as an individual, facing tragedy after tragedy as he seeks grace, unfolds by having four actors play him — Tolson, Wechsler, Brody, and Haqq — each taking over in a cleverly choreographed switch of bodies. It might be perplexing at first, but it makes sense as the show continues, adding not only a dash of inventiveness but an intriguing opportunity for the audience to guess which actor will wear the crown next and how they will depict the prince.
The nine-person cast gleefully handles more than two dozen parts, making small augmentations to Ashley Rose Horton’s somewhat makeshift classical costumes of white outfits and brown sandals. Standing out are Austrian (Cymbeline, Into the Woods), Young (Cymbeline, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), and Tony nominee Grotelueschen (Tootsie, Assassins), who is boisterous and energetic throughout.
Fiasco might not have solved the many problems of Pericles — which has never been on Broadway, has never been adapted into a film, and has been staged at the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park only once, fifty years ago — but in this iteration, you’re likely not to worry too much about the details; rather, you’ll just have a grand old time.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]