Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Pericles

  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Every now and again, I’ve been lucky to see a revival of an existing play that makes that play feel freshly written, as if designed for that company and that moment. The reworking of Death of a Salesman for an African American family; Theatre Wallay’s reworking of The Taming of the Shrew as a commentary…

  • Pericles (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Pericles (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    An Actors Renaissance Season show may not have a director, but Pericles has a handy stage manager in Gower. Annabelle Rollison’s Chorus (unnamed in this production) burst onto the stage following the pre-show announcements to introduce the fable of Pericles to the rest of the ensemble, who assembled around her as a rapt onstage audience.…

  • Pericles (Yohangza) @ Seoul Arts Centre (archival recording)

    Pericles (Yohangza) @ Seoul Arts Centre (archival recording)

    The sands of time have already covered up much of history. On Lim Il-jin’s enormous, deep stage, sand expands as far as the eye can see, into the dark recesses. The faded magnificence of the ages emerges from the sand: the colossal head of a statue of Diana, lying on its side; a chandelier near a grand…

  • Pericles (Willow Globe) @ Oystermouth Castle

    Pericles (Willow Globe) @ Oystermouth Castle

    The Willow Globe in Powys, Wales, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019, and the coincidence of the British Shakespeare Association holding its first conference in Wales led to a special performance of the company’s Pericles in the grounds of Oystermouth Castle. A more beautiful setting for an outdoor production of Pericles is hard to imagine; the high stone walls…

  • Pembroke Arcadia (Fluellen Theatre) @ Taliesin Arts Centre

    Pembroke Arcadia (Fluellen Theatre) @ Taliesin Arts Centre

    Romance has had something of a resurgence in recent years on the UK stage, with high-profile productions of Pericles and Cymbeline joining the more regularly staged Winter’s Tale and Tempest, and scattered productions of both Tudor and Jacobean/Caroline romances by Lyly, Greene, Fletcher and others have found welcoming audiences. To adapt one of the period’s iconic prose/poetry romances for the stage, however,…

  • Périclès, Prince de Tyr (Cheek by Jowl) @ Les Gémeaux, Sceaux

    Périclès, Prince de Tyr (Cheek by Jowl) @ Les Gémeaux, Sceaux

    NB This piece is based on the first two public performance as well as the final two pre-opening rehearsal runs. I am grateful to Cheek by Jowl for so generously allowing me to observe the final stages of preparation. Cheek by Jowl last assayed Pericles in 1984/5 in an acclaimed production that Carole Wood declared ‘cathartic, affecting,…

  • Pericles (University College Cork/LittleShoes Productions) @ The Unitarian Church, Cork

    Pericles (University College Cork/LittleShoes Productions) @ The Unitarian Church, Cork

    I spent the first half of last week in Cork for the event ‘Celebrating Shakespeare 400: Performing Pericles, Prince of Tyre’. Part of the extensive Irish Shakespeare festival commemorating the 400 years since Shakespeare’s death, this event was billed as offering what appears to be only the second ever performance of Pericles in Ireland, coupled with a day-long…

  • Pericles (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    Pericles (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    Dominic Dromgoole’s tenure as Artistic Director of the Globe is ending, perhaps unsurprisingly, with stagings of four of Shakespeare’s ‘late plays’ as the first full Shakespeare productions in the Sam Wanamaker. Pericles, the first of these, plays to Dromgoole’s strengths: a rousing, varied play with huge shifts in tone, varied environments and a large ensemble cast. Brilliantly,…

  • Pericles (Ketterer’s Men) @ The Shakespeare Institute

    Pericles (Ketterer’s Men) @ The Shakespeare Institute

    For those of us who knew Lizz Ketterer, even partly or briefly, she remains a very present absence three years after her passing. The Trust set up in her memory raises funds to allow one promising young early modernist each year the opportunity to attend the RSC’s summer school; the bench in the garden of the…

  • Pericles (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who’s seen ‘Pericles’. It’s debatable, to be honest, whether I know anyone who’s even read it, it only surviving in severely corrupt or conjecturally reconstructed texts. It’s not a play which people seem to know much about (“It’s a Roman one, innit?”) and the theatre tonight, while bustling…