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‘Pericles’ @ Georgia Shakes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW “Pericles” Grade: B
8 p.m. Saturday and continuing through July 27 in rotating repertory with “The Servant of Two Masters.” $15-$40. Conant Performing Arts Center, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-264-0020; gashakespeare.org.
The verdict: Pimp my “Pericles.”
The word on Shakespeare’s “Pericles” is that the bard did not write the first couple of acts. Maybe that’s why the storytelling is often as choppy as the titular prince’s storm-tossed journey from Antioch to Mytilene and points in between.
With that essential flaw in mind, Georgia Shakespeare has installed an elegant new production that takes the emphasis off the clumsy narrative and transforms the romance into an exotic fairy tale which plays like a travelog of the ancient world.
Always eager to exploit his design tool kit, director Richard Garner places the tale of the erstwhile prince in what looks like the hull of a magnificent ship, gleefully alternating stunning costumes with nifty stage tricks and a couple of clever in-jokes for regular patrons. (Cowboys and ’70s glam-trash are de rigueur this season.) Another major plus: Composer Klimchak’s ambient score, which he performs live, is an appropriately loopy pastiche of Theremin-stoked creepiness and pulsating club noise.
Like “The Tempest” and “The Winter’s Tale,” “Pericles” is a magical meditation on suffering, loss and redemption.
Job-like Pericles (Joe Knezevich) loses his wife (Park Krausen) and daughter (Amelia Hammond), only to be united with them in the end. Along the way, we see hapless knights battling for a wife in a clever slo-mo sequence. Pagan priestesses resurrecting a corpse-bride like something out of a vintage horror flick. And a young virgin outsmarting assassins, pirates and a brothel full of degenerates.
While Knezevich gives a sturdy account of Pericles’ descent from vigorous youth to grief-stricken old man, the fun is in watching the terrific ensemble members transform themselves from moment to moment.
One minute, Crystal Dickinson is a healer in the Temple of Diana (with requisite crystal ball and magic herbs); the next she’s a brothel mistress with a leopard coat, glitter-encrusted platform shoes, a mouthful of blackened teeth and a lowly Cockney accent. Ditto Brad Sherrill, as an incestuous king who appears to have stepped out of an Old Masters painting and, later, plays a freaky brothel lackey in a purple-streaked raccoon wig, yin-yang T-shirt and ridiculous trousers. Chris Kayers gets to wear a kilt — and a gangsta-style fur.
Sydney Roberts is responsible for the outrageous fashion, a United Nations parade that takes us from Ethiopia to the Ottoman Empire to Sex Pistols-era London. Kat Conley contributes the set pieces, which resemble upended shelf brackets or the ribs of a ship. Liz Lee furnishes the sumptuous lighting. And Garner brings it all together with panache.
Using fabric to approximate the rippling contours of the sea may not be newest idea, but never has the device looked so pretty. And if you find yourself scratching your head over Conley’s bare-bones design, you’ll be rewarded in the final glorious seconds of the show.
If Garner gets a little carried away pimping an uneven story that is already overloaded with theatricality, his intentions are good.
“Libraries have been written on the personality of Hamlet,” critic Harold Boom writes, “but Pericles has none whatsoever.”
Let us be grateful, then, to Georgia Shakes for giving this little-known play such a swashbuckling and irresistible reading.
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