skygiants | (no subject)

Really recommend having friends whom you can message and say 'hey I will be in town next month, what theater should we go see' and inevitably it will be a banger; relatedly, also really recommend Fiasco Theater's Pericles at the Classic Stage Company if you happen to get a chance to see it.

Pericles is one of Shakespeare's Weird Ones -- it spans 20 years, the titular Pericles bops around from island to island having really tonally dissonant adventures, villains get erased from the narrative offscreen because they were struck by lightning and assassinations get interrupted by pirates turning up out of nowhere to suddenly kidnap the assassinatee -- and Fiasco Theater not only gets round this but joyously leans into it. From the moment in the first scene that an evil king gestures to what in Shakespeare's text is a Pile of Dead Heads and in this production is four actors standing around the main action tilting their heads and making grotesque 'we're dead!' faces in perfect unison, I knew we were going to be in extremely good hands.

The cast of the production are all costumed in very basic linen shirts and trousers, throwing on and off various capes and scarves and headgears and bits of armor as they take on different characters; every time Pericles encounters a major oceanic transition, a new Pericles actor takes over, with the previous Pericles rotating back into the ensemble. This has the impressive effect of making the relative incoherence of the play feel intentional and perhaps even meaningful, while also giving every single actor a chance to shine in at least three different roles. Our first Pericles also played a raunchy governor and a random prince with one line and clearly had as much or more fun delivering his one line as the random prince as he did any of his larger roles, and you got that sense from all of them all the way through.

Generally speaking, the show was consistently very funny and charming without becoming so much a parody that its emotional beats did not hit. I was especially impressed by the SUPER CUTE royal father & daughter duo in the second section -- this also had a really delightful dance scene where there was some business of the dad king making a point of Showing His Daughter's Crush How the Choreography Worked and it was just so, so fun -- and by the fact that somehow this cast managed to make the brothel scene in the back half, which I think would have been excruciating and miserable to watch in almost any other production, really fun and entertaining. They were also really natural at interacting with the audience! It was a very small theater, and the actors had made a point of wandering around before the official start of the show to say hello, so when a guy two seats next to us got struck down with a mortifying coughing fit the narrator could pause to nod and tell him "you're fine" and it just felt very like yeah, okay, the fourth wall is and should be a permeable thing and we and the cast are all in it together enjoying the magic of theater.

The one thing I did not like is that there were a couple of songs in the production, and several of the songs used modern language and unnecessarily spelled out things that the actors had just made perfectly clear with effective stagecraft, and we all agreed on leaving that they needn't have and in fact we would really rather they hadn't. I am exempting the opening song from this, which in fact does mostly use language from the play and as a result I found it perfectly fine; you can in fact hear it in the trailer, here:

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This sounds amazing! I love the shifting cast idea. I saw a production of Tempest that had three actors for each role and it was really interesting.

oh, fascinating -- did they all change over at once, or at different key points throughout the play?

It's going to sound goofy, but all 3 actors playing one part were onstage, holding a sheet with the character's name, and they took turns. It really worked onstage. There were two guys and a girl playing Oberon, and when it was her turn one guy lifted her on his back while she spoke. The Pucks held hands and messed with each other, and the two Titanias shared the sheet like it was a royal robe. This was the showcase for an extremely small Shakespeare academy type thing in Santa Fe many years ago, and I've never forgotten it. It was fascinating to see three different interps simultaneously. No set, no props, just the actors and the words.

The rotating cast sounds fascinating! Did you find it at all difficult to tell who was playing who, when, or was the costuming consistent enough that it was always easy?

Re: friends who recommend you good theater: I am going to see Fat Ham in May on your recommendation! V. excited.

No, they made it really clear -- every time a Pericles swapped over, the new Pericles would come up behind the old one and they'd do a sort of paired dance to gently usher the old one off ... also the first time it happened the narrator said meaningfully something along the lines of 'here again is Pericles' and gave the whole audience a gimlet stare and some 'get it?' gestures.

and HELL YES I hope you enjoy Fat Ham very much!

I love the thought of the Pericles dance!

Fat Ham!!

This sounds great, and I am amused that the fun, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink production of Pericles I once saw *also* had unnecessary modern-language songs.

a proud tradition! I guess!!!

I saw Pericles at the Globe nearly 20 years ago, and Mark Rylance played Pericles (unexpectedly - he wasn’t in the regular cast). I still think about his line reading of “I’m Pericles”, it was so incredible. Apart from that mostly I remember various cast members swinging around the Globe on ropes and a very offended parent dragging her children out during the brothel scene.

I like the rotating Pericles idea!

sajd;lfkdj well this sounds like a great production but how does SURPRISE MARK RYLANCE work? did he just turn up and say he wanted to play Pericles that day and they're like "sure, Mark Rylance, do whatever you want"?

He was the artistic director of the Globe at the time, so probably!

From the moment in the first scene that an evil king gestures to what in Shakespeare's text is a Pile of Dead Heads and in this production is four actors standing around the main action tilting their heads and making grotesque 'we're dead!' faces in perfect unison, I knew we were going to be in extremely good hands

I love it.

The shifting cast concept sounds so cool!

This particular theater company is really committed to ensemble work and centering actors in the process and you can really tell, the whole company just feels really comfortable and happy working together with chemistry sparking off in all directions!

That sounds marvelous. I love the trailer and opening song - it gets across the joyous, freewheeling nature of the production.

I have seen Pericles exactly once, in college, and all I remember was that it was a very small-scale production staged at one end of the student lounge.

Yes!! isn't it great?

asjd;fjd staging Pericles in the smallest space possible is an extremely funny choice given how much time the play spends just sailing in boats around the world

I watched Pericles at the Sam Wanamaker, so small Jacobean style theatre, with actors who were playing the background characters as confused as the audience. "She has been...kidnapped by pirates?" We referred to one character as Surprise Incest King.

It was the origin of my belief that this was Shakespeare having one of those drunk evenings where you and your best friend keep coming up with new tropes to add.

NO ONE EXPECTS THE PERICLES PIRATES

Oh, I love that moment of fourth-wall breaking! That seems so perfectly Shakespearian, too, the actors interacting with the audience just as they would have done at the Globe, except with less throwing of rotten vegetables if someone is having an off night.

Yeah, absolutely! Their website about Their Philosophy says "we view the audience as an important and necessary part of the team" and you really could feel that was true, we were all part of Making Theater Happen and sort of sharing the world of Shakespeare space.

Aw, that's great.