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Watching the story meander through six kingdoms with its long arcing separations and reunions, I realized that this is the most medieval of Shakespeare's plays more like Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Arabian Nights than The Tempest, Cymbeline, or Troilus and Cressida.
There are vile villains and villainesses in Pericles in a fairy-tale vein. There are pure women who endure their woes patiently until they are reclaimed after long years, veritably reborn like Lear's Cordelia or women in satyr plays. All surround Pericles, the prince of Tyre who suffers all and is ennobled by his sufferings. Jonathan Goad seems to get better in the title role, measuring his words more effectively as the wandering prince ages and acquires wisdom. Thom Marriott adds a haunting layering as the sardonic narrator Gower, buffed in pale body paint and wearing little more than a diaper. His final exit down a trapdoor with an ocean of silk following him was spellbinding.
The joy that the prince feels reuniting with wife and child had a poignant resonance. Going to a distant place like Stratford to see a seldom-produced drama like Pericles, I found the joy of discovery enhanced by the length of the journey.
Still if you want to sample the Festival Theatre and Stratford at their best, I have to give the edge to their magnificent revival of The King and I. The entire stage is inlaid with red, black, and gold lacquer. Huge pillars topped by gleaming statues flank the upstage wall, a royal archway with tall palatial doors between them. Costumes are as eye-popping as the Bangkok palace.
And where's the orchestra? Presumbly up above that archway. But I never saw the conductor or a single TV monitor, and I never figured out how the singers caught their cues.
Even so, Debra Hanson's set, Roger Kirk's costumes, and musical director Berthold Carriere's wizardry aren't the chief wonders. What's rarer and more precious is the attitude. Under Susan Schulman's direction, Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I is treated with the reverence and devotion of a theatre classic. Nowadays, most Broadway and touring productions aim to divert and impress like theme parks, tacitly devaluing the naked power of the music, the story, and the stars.
Lucy Peacock isn't the most charismatic singer I've heard, but her Anna is fabulous because she captures the British governess's starchiness perfectly and because those plucky R&H songs she sings are so superb. She simply has to act them to devastate us. Victor Talmadge owns the King without straining to be mighty or imperial, and the littlest of his many children are adorable without straining to be cute. Anything less natural would be insidiously condescending, undercutting the message of the story.
Simply, this is how musical theatre should be written and produced.
The Shaw Festival
www.shawfest.com
With an eccentric, fiercely radical, devilishly witty Irish icon as their standard bearer, the Shaw Festival seems to have taken a quirkier, more intellectually rigorous and elitist path in carving out its mission. Launched in 1962, the Shaw paralleled its elder Stratford cousin by starting out exclusively devoted to the works of George Bernard Shaw. While Stratford exploded its original boundaries, the Shaw has merely expanded them, keeping its original name.
Beginning on April 3 and running through November, the Shaw concentrates on GBS, his contemporaries, and plays dealing with the birth and essence of modernity. The Shaw claims to be the second largest theatre festival in North America but not insistently. It has grown to three theaters in a strictly zoned village where you can find every Festival offering, plus a profusion of fetching shops and two ritzy hotels, by strolling along Queen Street. Walk down a few blocks from the main drag and, in clear weather, you can see the Toronto skyline across Lake Ontario. Hop in your car or rent a bike and you can make a quick excursion to Niagara Falls, extolled by Oscar Wilde as "The second great disappointment in American marriage."
Court House Theatre Outside the exterior is gray and dignified. But inside the festival's original theater space, there's a pleasant 327-seat layout surrounding a thrust stage. Here's where you'll find the prime cuts at the Shaw and the most intimate presentations.
The protein isn't served up with the same technical sizzle you see down in Stratford. With Shaw's Widowers' Houses on my plate, the depth of the acting and the playwright's ideas were quite sufficient. GBS's first play is surprisingly well-crafted, with an absorbing plot, well-rounded antagonists, and a provocative inversion of normal happy endings.
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Calendar
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Improv Game Night @ CATCh
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ANNIE LEIBOVITZ / WORK @ Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts
- Tuesdays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Continues through Aug. 31
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Ain't Got No Men @ NarroWay Productions
- Saturdays, 5-8:30 p.m., Saturdays, 12-3:45 p.m. and Fridays, 6:30-9:30 p.m. Continues through July 18
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Date Night: Sip & Paint @ Blush CLT
- Fridays, 8-10 p.m. Continues through July 25
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Robots, Rockets, & Rovers @ The Schiele Museum of Natural History and Planetarium
- Sat., June 14, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
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Humana Festival 2003
Winners and losers in the annual national festival
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More Spring Events
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New Documentary Will Showcase Untold Story of Melungeon People 9
From infamy to diversity
