Coastal
Post Online
June, 2003
Shakespeare At Stinson:
PERICLES
By Jeff Smith
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Having survived the combined assaults
of penury, chaos, bureaucracy, schism and sundry Philistines, Shakespeare at
Stinson has reached the ripe old, improbable, age of ten. Against all odds and amid rancorous,
seemingly sustained discord, over 45,000 tickets have been sold and 29
productions completed on the various evolutions of the Spartan, minimalist
Stinson stage.
Despite the obstacles and challenges,
miraculously, when the curtain rises for any Stinson performance, all evidence
of the ensuing fray is completely swept away.
Invariably the audience is thoroughly transported and entertained by
Shakespeare: the playwright who refuses to be diminished either by time or by
civic strife.
Within the ever changing landscape of
the Shakespeare at Stinson theatrical compound, this season boldly opened with
PERICLES. It is a tale set in the
Levant: the eastern Mediterranean. Much
like Shakespeare at Stinson, the story of PERICLES is richly strewn with
vacillating fortune, tempests, treachery, deceit and sorrow. Likewise, PERICLES ends with the redemptive
victory of steadfast virtue. Parents beware, PERICLES is lightly seasoned with
bawdy humor and just a smidgeon of incest.
As usual Shakespeare's most lascivious messages are primly veiled, to
wit, "She is able to freeze the god Priapus, and undo a whole
generation."
Award winning director Kenneth
Kelleher hones and polishes his cast to their finest edges yet he preserves the
intended rusticity of the original play.
By keeping his cast of talented players diminutive, Mr. Kelleher creates
the feeling that his production is the performance of an errant theater troupe
staging improvisational Shakespeare in the courts, banquet halls and dining rooms
of Elizabethan England.
Ten actors and actressesâ
"equipped with rudimentary props and costumes, on a barren stageâ"
are resourcefully cast, recast and recast again into the nearly thirty roles
called for in Shakespeare's original dramatis personae. As the setting and action of the play
hop-scotch from Antioch, to Tyre, to Tarsus, Pentapolis, Ephesus and Mytilene,
familiar faces continue to reappear.
But, as the play's narrator, Gower, informs the audience in the
prologue, this play is the retelling of a story or the re-singing of a song,
i.e. "to sing a song that old was song." PERICLES is story telling; not drama in the traditional sense.
Stinson stalwarts Drew Anderson and
Kalli Jonsson bring conspicuous experience and talent to the stage. Their meticulous articulation, careful timing
and chiseled pronunciations render the script's poetic Elizabethan English
easily decipherable for all audiences.
Choreographer Mary Beth Cavanaugh,
another Stinson veteran, is stylistically on the mark: yet her dancers lack the
commensurate passion and elan to rise above the mere mechanics of dance. When King Simonides witnesses the dance of
his daughter Thaisa with Pericles, the script calls for him to be so impressed
by their mutual passions that he immediately insists they wed. As performed, their dispassionate dance
reveals almost no chemistry between Pericles and Thaisa. Their tepid movements are more indicative of
couples counseling than matrimony.
The lighting designs of Jim Gross,
literally slice through the indigenous fog and sea mist of Stinson. Jim's Klieg
beacons bring the action into focus and substantially enhance the drama of the
entire production.
While much of the original
Shakespeare at Stinson infrastructure has disappeared, the new ecologically
sensitive theater grounds are more spacious and include such amenities picnic
tables for early arrivals. Artist
director Jeffrey Trotter, claims that since he no longer encroaches on Easkoot
Creek, both the Sockeye and Chinook salmon are running again. Be warned however: until Mr. Trotter gets
fire code compliant radiant heaters like the Sand Dollar, climate control is
left to the individual. Mukluks may be
more appropriate than Birkenstocks and down-filled parkas may prevail over tank
tops. Show times are 7 p.m. on Friday
and Saturday, and 6 p.m. on Sunday. For
user friendly Shakespeare at fiscally friendly prices, call the box office at
415 868-1115 (and oh yeah, hit the pound sign if you are willing to forego
Jeffrey Trotter's prolix prologue).