STORRS — Shakespeare is already a difficult undertaking for any actor, let alone acting students, but for the Connecticut Repertory Theatre cast, performing “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” through Sunday, I can only imagine the seemingly insurmountable task of bringing the play not to the stage, but to Zoom for a full two-hour performance.
Director Raphael Massie said during the introduction to the play that his vision for “Pericles” was for the play to have a comic book environment — and through a clever bit of storytelling by utilizing Zoom and its facets, along with some clever background designs and puppetry to create a more comic book world of narrative, he admirably succeeded.
Why this comic book-style production works is in part due to Shakespeare’s story. The story of Pericles (Damian Thompson) is very episodic, opening with him looking to court the daughter of Antiochus (Nick Luberto), King of Antioch. Upon discovering the incestuous relationship between Antiochus and his daughter, Pericles flees as an assassin pursues him. The story develops as each act of the play creates its own singular adventure for him.
Being a comic book reader myself, I equate the structure of the play combined with the design concept of this production with a five-part series of comics that used to be released monthly when I was a child, each act ending with its own cliffhanger enticing the audience to stick around and see where the story will go next. Granted, this production only has one intermission, so that sense of anticipation is slightly abated, but it still plays out effectively.
The visual effects are beautiful and much of “Pericles’” success is dependent upon puppet designer Genna Beth Davidson and illustrator Amber Meadows.
Meadows’ illustrations set a slight fantasy to the settings of each scene as they start off as sketches and blossom with color, while Davidson’s puppetry, predominantly used to segue from Gower’s (Lauren F. Walker) monologues — which serves as the traditional Shakespearean chorus — to the action, have a marriage of Chinese shadow puppetry and the artwork of Kara Walker.
Thompson gives an expressive performance as Pericles, though sometimes it feels a little too dynamic for a televised medium as a streaming service.
The most exceptional performance belongs to grad student Kiera “Kee” Prusmack, who plays King Simonides of Pentapolis with a delightful sensual glee. Considering the role is male and Prusmack is not, the choice to make Simonides effeminate, or maybe even changing the gender of the role — which is a plausible choice here — worked, as there was a certain admiration from Prusmack that gave off a lustiness for Pericles that I enjoyed. Prusmack also plays Marina, Pericles’ daughter, a character who gets taken by pirates and sold to a brothel at one point. Prusmack carefully and tactfully balances the rigor of a woman who defends her moral standard in a den of iniquity, without making it overly comedic or tragic. What comes from the performance ends up bearing the heroism that her own father showed, if not more so, during a knights tournament earlier in the play.
There are a few trifles with the production, some of the performances are a bit stilted, which has become expected with these Zoom-style performances. It’s a shame, because part of what really helps “Pericles” work best is when the actors are not facing the screen. With the technical design for this production, everybody is framed on screen to make the interaction feel more natural, and it would have played to that comic book aesthetic if the actors took a quarter turn toward the people they were acting with to make it feel from an audience standpoint that they were connected in the scene. This would have only made things more difficult for the performers, though, as they wouldn’t have been able to read and reply to the actions of their fellow actors, unless there was a second monitor off screen that they could see.
Some of the actors also played too many characters that appeared on screen right after each other. To the detriment of Luberto’s performance, it took several minutes for me to realize that he was no longer playing Antiochus but had moved on to playing a different role.
Even with the inherent production problems that come from this style of theater that we are currently experiencing due to the pandemic, “Pericles” is an excellently designed and conceived production, with some exceptional performances that make it worth taking a couple hours out of your evening to watch.
“PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE”
Theater: Connecticut Repertory
Location: Streaming via Zoom
Production: Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Raphael Massie; scenic design/iIllustrations by Amber Meadows; lighting design by Rachel Schumacher; costume design by Sofia Perez; sound design by Emily Adua Nassiff; puppet design by Genna Beth Davidson
Performance times: Today and Saturday 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m.
CHARACTER………………………………………ACTOR
Gower/Diana………………………………Lauren Walker
Pericles……………………………….Damian Thompson
Antiochus/Leonine/Lysimachus….Nick Luberto
Daughter/Thaisa/Pander………………Eliza Carson
Thaliard/Escanes/Pirate……………………Tony King
Helicanus/Cerimon…………………..Trevele Morgan
Dionyza………………………………………Abigail Hilditch
Cleon……………………………………….Alex Kosciuszek
Fisher 1/Bolt………………………………………Jim Jiang
Fisher 2/Lychorida/Bawd…………..Jamie Feidner
Simonedes/Marina………………….Kiera Prusmack
Phileomn/Pirate…………………………Nicolle Cooper
