Summary 
Saturday morning cartoon version of the late romantic adventure, with a dimwitted but likeable hero in a colorful blend of fairy tale and comedy - with a pinch of dark tragedy - enhanced by shimmering near-eastern costumes and an original score. A choric trinity serves as comic narrator, dancing and singing and telling a story that extols endurance of biblical proportions. Featherweight fun, presented with charmingly threadbare ingenuity.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by Michael Merritt. Costumes by Nan Zabriskie. Lights by Robert Shook. Sound by Robert Neuhaus. Original music by Alaric Rokko Jans. Choreography by Jim Corti. Fights by Bruce A. Young.
Cast
Peter Siragusa (Chorus/Pandar), Christopher Walz (Chorus/Bolt), Ora Jones (Chorus/ Lychorida/Bawd), John Malloy (Antiochus), Peter Aylward (Pericles), Christine Calkins (Princess of Antioch/Marina), Robert Scogin (Thaliard/Cerimon), Danny Johnson (Helicanus), Greg Vinkler (Cleon/Simonides), Linda Kimbrough (Dionyza/Goddess Diana), Kristine Thatcher (Princess Thaisa), Kevin Gudahl (Leonine/Lysimachus).
Analysis
Shakespeare Repertory's approach to the notoriously difficult Pericles - heavy with plot, a multitude of locations, a variety of tones from whimsical romance to gloomy tragedy - is to present it all as a colorful cartoon. Director Barbara Gaines presents a featherweight adventure like a tongue-in-cheek swashbuckling pirate B-movie from the 1950s - with some rough and bumpy patches like royal incest, slavery, and some jarringly exaggerated second-half dramatics - with dashes from a glitzy television miniseries and a cliffhanger radio serial. The stage bill indicates the production takes place "once upon a time," and Gaines' production - entertaining and light-hearted, quite the theatrical opposite of Macbeth, its partner in repertory - succeeds not because of one particular emphasis or another, but as a sum of the parts, a richly realized theatrical fairy tale.
Gaines excises the narrator Gower from her Pericles, instead providing a comical trio of storytellers that recite, mime, chant, dance, and sing their way through the story, serving both as detail-explaining Chorus and comic relief during slow spots and transitions. The three-person vaudeville routine - two men, one agile and wiry, the other rotund and booming, and a woman with an electrifying voice - take on a slew of supporting and extra roles, keeping the stage active and lively. An original musical score - almost new age style with some traditional eastern influence - enhances the production, which features wispy silk costumes in a variety of vibrant colors. And fight scenes are expertly choreographed, not the usual big and showy movements with exaggerated grunts (a la the company's concurrently running Macbeth), but quick strikes with plenty of movement and energy.
Gaines' first half brims with charming sequences and whimsical moments, played at a quick pace and nearly but not quite over-the-top by her ensemble. Some of the flourishes are threadbare and uncomplicated, but at the same time wonderfully inventive, almost enchanting - a rolling storm at sea is represented by sailors on either side of a see-saw like plank teeter-tottering over a heavy wooden barrel; a tragedy-causing hurricane is indicated by just the whistling wind and billowing of an enormous white sail - and some are fun to watch but not quite as magical: the ocean pursuit by the eye-patched pirates occurs with the buccaneers oddly hunkered down between sandwich boards painted on each side as pirate clipper ships, and the three bandits zip around the stage with childlike silliness.
Peter Aylward portrays the tragically misfortunate Pericles as something of a naïve twit, barely cognizant of the gravity of events going on around him - famine, a deadly joust, a homicidal king - but responding with muscle-bound courage and smiling hands-on-hips good spirits. Sandy-haired and boyish but gruff of voice, with a B-movie star's charm and looks but a daft and almost dumbfounded expression, Aylward's Pericles bounds from scene to scene in a dash between Monopoly game-like Mediterranean sea ports. On the run because he has surmised the secret of the incestuous king and his lascivious daughter, Aylward's dim-witted Pericles finds his wife given up for dead and his daughter sold into slavery. The first act concludes with the production's most effectively poignant moment: after a dance sequence to assuage the pain of the desolate lovers, Pericles laments in broken cries at one side of the stage, while Thaisa is restored on the other side, the alchemist sprinkling her lightly with a concoction of herbs that brings her back to life, the first sign just a subtle twitching of the feet.
The second half of the production loses a good deal of its first-half energy, and although it does not become repetitive or dull, little is offered that is as charming or entertaining as in the first half. Aylward's Pericles succumbs to a melodramatic dementia complete with forearm crashes against the stage and bitter gnashing of teeth. Aylward wails through sixteen years of stage time, his gruff voice becoming hoarser, but with the appearance of the goddess Diana, the once powerhouse hero rises again. The restored Thaisa radiates joy and elevates the emotional reunion of husband-and-wife and father-and-daughter. Pericles and Thaisa share in a formal ballroom dance that comes across as somewhat awkward, if appropriately exuberant. The dance concludes a spirited fairy-tale vision of a difficult travelogue that moves more toward romance than tragedy.