The “Pericles” that opened at the Public Theater a week ago Sunday with Campbell Scott in the title role is a real cheerer-upper—both in its own right and as an antidote to what has been up to now a very lean and disappointing season. Directed by Michael Greif, one of the company’s new resident directors, the production is intelligent, fun, moving, coherent, and lovingly acted. Even if one had no interest in the play, this “Pericles” would be worth seeing, partly for the performances and partly because productions of Shakespeare that put the play and the audience first—before the director and the actors—are so rare in New York. Mr. Greif hasn’t come at the play with a sledgehammer and a self-serving conceit. Instead his idea seems to have been to direct each scene in whatever style or with whatever conceit would serve it best. “Pericles” is one of those time-warp plays—like “A Winter’s Tale” and “Cymbeline”—in which families are split up and seas are crossed and sufficient time passes to enable lost babies to grow up and be reunited with redeemed or resurrected relatives. I’ve seen four productions of “Pericles,” and have come to the conclusion that good taste and good faith are the only things that can make the play fly.
The current production swings between broad comedy and wild histrionics without ever descending into the kind of camp that marred JoAnne Akalaitis’s “Cymbeline,” several years ago. Mr. Greif, who clearly knows what’s poignant, what’s witty, and what’s melodramatic, keeps us entertained without ever letting us forget the darker strands of the play’s fabric: this is due mostly to a combination of evocative music (composed by Jill Jaffe) and evocative set design (conceived by John Arnone). The stage is dominated by a portrait of Grief—black-robed, black-hooded, face hidden by an out-sized hand—that keeps disappearing and reappearing as actors open and close a door. It’s possible to leave the theater arguing about whether this or that device worked, or whether Mr. Grief got just the right tone in this or that scene, but you don’t want to take the work away from him.
The best thing about the production are the actors, some of whom—like Mr. Scott, Larry Block, Bobo Lewis, and Arnold Molina—one has seen before, though never to such advantage or so well directed. Some, like the versatile Don R. McManus (in the choric role of Gower) and the magisterial Paul Butler (who plays Helicanus), are simply actors one can never get enough of. Some play two or more roles. I was particularly impressed by the women: Saundra McClain, who does a wonderful comic turn as the wicked Queen Dionyza, in one scene managing to be villainous en faisant sa toilette; Martha Plimpton, who gives us a beautifully pissed-off Marina (it’s an interesting choice); and Cordelia Gonzalez, who is both funny and lovely as Pericles’ wife, Thaisa. It’s uplifting to see a collection of actresses whose beauty derives from passion, character, and an ability to handle the script.
Ordinarily, one would say that the actor who plays the title role leads the ensemble. But though Mr. Scott’s Pericles is complicated and compelling and makes you want to see what else this actor has in store for us in the Shakespearean vein (his Angelo in Mark Lamos’s “Measure for Measure” didn’t affect me that way), the real star of the company is an extraordinarily gifted and accomplished actor named Byron Jennings, a newcomer to New York. In three roles, he performs in three totally different styles, each subtler and more effective than the last, combining feeling, intellect, and comic timing in a way I haven’t seen before on any New York Shakespeare Festival stage. According to a program note, Mr. Jennings, who has himself played Pericles, has performed at theaters all over the country, where audiences have seen his Hamlet, his Valentine, his Benedick, his Coriolanus, his Prospero, and his Richard III. I long to see them all.
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, December 9, 1991