Several weeks ago, Carleton students took a trip up to the Cities to see the Ten Thousand Things performance of Shakespeare’s Pericles. The trip was made possible by the Elizabeth S. Thompson Memorial Fund. According to Pierre Hecker, who was kind enough to share this story with us, “Elizabeth, class of 1994, was an enthusiastic theatergoer. Her family wanted to enable other students to have the experience of seeing Shakespeare live. They believe, as Elizabeth did,in the transformative power of performance. I find it beautiful and moving that we remember her here in a way that becomes part of students’ experience of Carleton.” After getting the opportunity to see this performance, some Carleton students wrote reviews in response to the production. Two students, Emma Halper (‘18) and Claire O’Brien (‘17), shared their in-depth and thoughtful papers, and excerpts from them are printed below.
Emma Halper:
“Minneapolis’ innovative theater company Ten Thousand Things is performing Shakespeare’s Pericles this season, bringing the play to prisons, work camps, battered women’s shelters, and to Open Book in Minneapolis. Pericles is one of Shakespeare’s later plays, and an odd one too. The character of John Gower, 14th century poet, fills the role of a chorus and takes the audience through a plot-heavy tale filled with voyages, shipwrecks, separations, and reunions.
Director Michelle Hensley has created a production that is essentially a feminist re-working of the play. She has no qualms about cutting the text, noting in the program that “the most important thing about Shakespeare is that he’s dead and we’re alive.” Pericles is generally thought to have more than one author, and Hensley has added another: she commissioned their in-house playwright Kira Obelensky to write new speeches for the goddess Diana and for Gower in the final two scenes. The idea is interesting; the execution is clumsy.
The acting is a delight – played loose and easy with a keen sense of fun. Ansa Akyea’s Pericles is sincere, humble, and extremely likable. All the actors, with the exception of Akyea, play many roles. Their cohesion and chemistry as an ensemble is superb, with Pearce Bunting and Maggie Chestovich standing out as particularly versatile and oh so funny.
This production has two glaring flaws. The first is the portrayal of Bawd, a female pimp. Hensley chose to have a man in drag play her, and the resulting humor is entirely cheap and beneath the level of the rest of the show. In fact Hensley passed up an interesting opportunity to explore the differing attitudes women in the play have towards sex.
The second flaw is the re-writing of the final speeches. The writing itself is clumsy and glaringly different from the rest of the text. It is the content, though, that is the real problem. Diana and Gower chastise Pericles for his failure to respect and protect the women in his life. They have a point. And yet, these two speeches are so moralizing and overbearing as to undo much of the good work in the rest of the production. The majority of the production casts critical light on the way women are treated in a way that is both powerful and subtle. These final speeches try so hard to teach a lesson that the automatic reaction in the audience is resistance.”
Claire O’Brien:
“This being said, TTT’s Pericles is undoubtedly an entertaining show. Hensley manages to find the humor in what is otherwise a baffling and convoluted Shakespearian play. A certain court scene taking place in the palace of the clownish king Simonides comes to mind as one that had the audience in stitches with its portrayal of knights desperate for the princess Thaisa’s attention. Pearce Bunting, who plays both Simonides and Antiochus manages to be both a hilariously embarrassing father as well as a spine-chillingly perverted one. Maggie Chestovich is similarly two-sided in her portrayal of the corrupt queen Dionyzia as well as one of the eager knights vying for Thaisa’s hand.
TTT does a fine job of performing in an area formatted for its unique venues. A fully lit audience surrounds the actors on all sides, a set-up that allows for actor-viewer interaction. The costumes and props are refreshingly simple, though they perhaps strive too hard to distinguish between the multiple kingdoms Pericles visits. Peter Vitale’s musical effects bring the straightforward staging to life and create exactly the mystic atmosphere that the play begs for.
Pericles, like any other Shakespearian play, is a show that has been performed countless times over the centuries. After so many renditions, it becomes a challenge for contemporary directors to reshape the original into something fresh and relevant. Hensley takes this idea and runs with it by essentially re-writing the end to Pericles. While it may have been carried a bit far, it succeeds nonetheless in inspiring audiences with the aid of a strong cast and sense of purpose.”