Pericles, RSC 2024

Artistic Co-Director Tamara Harvey has chosen for her RSC directorial debut Pericles—a play that the company has produced only a handful of times in its history—and put it in the beloved (and smaller) Swan Theatre, leaving the summer’s showier productions (Merry Wives, The School for Scandal) to the larger main house. Perhaps by accident, her choice of venue perfectly suits this quietly powerful production, which gently invites the audience to participate vicariously in the sorrows and joys of the story. Indeed, this production embraces the folk tale aspects “To glad your ear and please your eye.” (1.1.4)^[1] Many cast members are also making their RSC debut, including Alfred Enoch as a charming and unusually young Pericles, and Rachelle Diedericks as a luminous Marina.

Given the text’s challenges (a program essay begins with the observation that the play has “always been defined by its faults”^[2]), Harvey has trimmed judiciously and reassigned or interpolated some lines. As an early example, Pericles announces, “I will go seek a queen for Tyre,” a line that clarifies the point of the first scene. The reduced role of Gower is subsumed into that of Marina, as Diedericks introduces herself as “from ashes ancient, we are come,” (1.1.2, textual change). This works well in the first half, but it has the unfortunate result of causing Marina…