Review: Shakespeare’s Oft-Neglected Pericles Gets a Hilarious Revival Off-Broadway

There are a few plays in the Shakespeare canon that have fallen by the wayside over the years, with Pericles being near the top of that list. It was popular in its day, mostly because of a sensational plot involving pirates, an incestuous king, a virtuous young woman sold into the sex trade, and her clever escape. But it’s also the play’s extravagance that probably made it fall out of favor. It can at times seem like just too much.

Fiasco Theater has ingeniously remedied many of the play’s excesses (not to mention its length) in an altogether joyous production at Classic Stage Company that comes in at a fast-paced two hours that delight from beginning to end. The company is known for its innovative stagings of Shakespeare and Sondheim using low-budget sets and props in creative ways (their Measure for Measure and Into the Woods still stand out in my memory). With Pericles, Fiasco has taken a gnarly beast of a play and not only made it accessible to newbies (no need to read it beforehand) but also turned it into a riotous romp that rivals the Bard’s best comedies.

Not that all the plot points are comical, but director Ben Steinfeld and the company have defanged the most gratuitous and unsavory elements of their sting. The play begins with Prince Pericles (Paco Tolson) trying to solve a riddle posed by King Antiochus (Noah Brody) that if solved would win him the hand of Antiochus’s daughter (Emily Young). Pericles solves the riddle, but in so doing he reveals the king’s incestuous relationship with his daughter, and he must flee the kingdom to avoid the king’s revenge.

This plot point sets in motion a whirlwind journey through other countries and over the high seas (a long shimmering cloth brings the stormy ocean to life) where Pericles saves a country from famine, marries another king’s daughter, has a child with her, and loses them both. Then miraculously, they are reunited after many travails, proving that good things come to the noble and the chaste.

Steinfeld and the cast know how outlandish all this is, and they treat this play with an abundance of play with just about everyone hopping into multiple roles willy-nilly. Paul L. Coffey is delightful in several parts including Pericles’s adviser, Helicanus, and Andy Grotelueschen is an absolute scream as King Simonides. Jessie Austrian gets nonstop laughs as the frantic proprietor of the bordello where Pericles’s virtuous daughter (Young) talks all the horny patrons into lives of chastity. Things are also kept fresh by Steinfeld’s decision to have four actors play the title role at different points. Tolson, Brody, Tatiana Wechsler, and Devin E. Haqq each bring the Prince of Tyre to life in unique ways, with Haqq giving a surprisingly moving performance at the end.

In Fiasco fashion, music plays a big role here as well. Steinfeld, who also takes on the role of narrator, has written a half dozen or so delightful songs that he and the cast sing while he strums the guitar. It all takes place on a stage with a simple scrim background and a stage populated only by a few small wooden boxes and a coffin-shaped crate (props by Sarah Pencheff-Martin). Mextly Couzin’s subtle lighting design creates beautiful moments during Pericles’s courtship with Simonides’s daughter, and Ashley Rose Horton’s blousy shirts and colorful sashes clue us into when an actor changes from one role to another.

For all the play’s notorious flamboyance, this production makes a case for Pericles having a more prominent place on modern stages. It’s Fiasco’s best work to date.