PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE (BBC Shakespeare)****

 

By Sophie

Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pericles-Prince-Tyre-Shakespeare-Collection/dp/B000KPCBNE/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Pericles&qid=1611435798&s=dvd&sr=1-1

Available until: Until Amazon sells out!

This production marks the end of my attempt to see every Shakespeare play at least three times. This does not include the Two Noble Kinsmen, Edward III or Sir Thomas More (which are not often performed) but does include the best-known thirty-seven. My next goal will be to see all the Shakespeare plays at least four times. It’s fair to say I’m looking forward to some more than others.

I’m not sure this production is available to watch online (or not legally), but it’s only £5.20 for the DVD and you’d be lucky to buy a livestream or on demand version for that price (though Shakespeare Happy Hours’ reduced version is excellent and Read for the Globe’s unrehearsed live reading is also enjoyable and they’re both free).

Pericles is a difficult play in terms of subject matter. Perhaps the best way to view it is to think of it as Shakespeare’s contribution to the YA genre. It contains many subjects which are extremely popular with many young adults, including the hiring of hitmen, selling women as prostitutes, and incest.

But although these are subjects that would normally seem rather unappealing, Shakespeare and his co-writer George Wilkins have wrapped up the story rather like a fairy tale with princesses, shipwrecks and even a wicked stepmother of sorts, and the result is a tale which is poetic in plot as well as in presentation.

It is rather episodic in nature, with Pericles and the other characters moving from one rather unrealistic but nevertheless compelling situation to another, often barely escaping with their lives. There are villains of all kinds, including some with hearts who must battle between their orders and their better natures. The good guys really are good people who might annoy you sometimes, but not to the extent where you’d actually want one of the murder attempts to be successful.

This production was filmed entirely on location and lacks the ‘live’ feel which makes it seem as though you’re living through every second with the characters, but it is enjoyable as a film. The early scenes made frequent use of fires and there were some moments where I was distracted from the text due to a fear that someone’s robes might catch fire (dramatic, perhaps, but not in the script and Shakespeare hardly requires any help in the drama department), but either the fires became less frequent or I became too immersed in the text to care.

David Hugh Jones (born in Dorset, disappointingly, though Pericles is Welsh) had strong connections with the Royal Shakespeare Company, directing a number of productions for them and it is clear he had a strong appreciation of the rhythm of Shakespeare’s words. His actors emphasise it enough for it to be strongly felt, but never at the expense of meaning. It sounds beautiful and musical, undulating gently along, often at odds with the horrific subject matter but somehow suiting it perfectly.

A number of Shakespeare’s plays have a prologue (with some also having an epilogue), but it is unusual for such a character to appear more than once. Romeo & Juliet’s Chorus appears twice, but it is only in Pericles and Henry V that such a character appears frequently, thereby being not so much a prologue as a narrator. In Pericles, the character of John Gower appears regularly to explain what has been happening ‘offstage’, but perhaps he also gives the story a distancing effect which makes the subject matter more palatable. It is being enacted before our eyes, but it is still a story.

Edward Petherbridge is excellent in the role of Gower. He tells the story very well and it’s interesting and exciting to listen to him. His Gower has a strong personality and a benevolent nature and I wonder if perhaps he’s Shakespeare himself, introducing his own play. These sections are captivating and I think I could have quite happily have sat for three hours while he narrated the whole thing.

Of course, if he had, I would have missed out on some brilliant performances from the rest of the cast. Nothing arouses my sympathies quite like the suffering of a man (it might be better not to take that statement too seriously) and Mike Gwilym, who plays Pericles, really knows how to suffer. His expression of emotion is very powerful and his speaking of the text is absolutely gorgeous. He also gives a very strong sense of how Pericles changes in response to his misadventures and this really helps to make the play seem more like a continuous story than a series of episodes.

Pericles has a lovely family too. Juliet Stevenson is an exceptional Thaisa - sweet and gentle but inwardly strong. Pericles’ love for her is more than justified. Amanda Redman plays their bewitching daughter Marina (though Pericles had better watch out - she has a talent for getting her own way which many parents would find alarming). Pericles’ relationship with baby Marina is also lovely to see and the child actor has a fairly strong claim to being (relatives aside) the cutest baby ever, looking round at her future subjects with deep interest and perhaps an element of calculation.

Patrick Godfrey brings across Helicanus’ intelligence, loyalty and morals strongly, while Annette Crosbie gives an incredible performance as Dionyza, probably the character who changes the most in the course of the play. She and Norman Rodway’s Cleon make a fascinating couple. John Woodvine is repellent as King Antiochus, and there’s a disturbingly unnatural (but brilliant) performance from Edita Brychta as his daughter.

There are a lot of roles in Pericles, but one great thing about them is how different they all are. John Bardon, Gordon Gostelow and Richard Derrington almost offer comedy as the three Fishermen, and Lila Kaye’s not exactly classy Bawd could easily have been very funny in another play. Nick Brimble exudes danger as Leonine – yet he manages to suggest there is more to him than that. As Lord Perimon, Clive Swift is an incredibly powerful presence, particularly when he attempts to save Thaisa.

This blog is supposed to be for performances that were either created in lockdown or recommended for theatre fans. But who says the recommendation can’t come from me? A great production of one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays.