Summary 
Scholarly adaptation culled from the published text, quarto versions, doctoral dissertations, and original sources. Played in a tiny studio space, the travails of the Job-like Pericles are enhanced by a Chorus of seven musicians and dancers that also play all the other roles. Intelligently realized, creatively staged.
Design
Adapted and directed by Gavin Witt. Set by Joshua Epstein. Costumes by Jana Stauffer. Lights by Duane Pagano. Compositions by David Dieckmann. Choreography by Jessica Young. Fights by Ned Mochel.
Cast
Robert McDonough (Pericles), Joanne Underwood (Marina), Brad Shelton (Antiochus/ Cleon/Simonides), Amy Matheny (Antiocha/Thaisa/Bawd), Karm Kerwell (Thaliard/Leonine/ Bolt), Christopher Tiffany (Escanes/Philemon/Lysimachus), Kimberly Hebert (Helicanus/ Cerimon), Holly Orfandes (Dionyza/Lychorida/Pander/Diana).
Analysis
Gavin Witt adapts Pericles to open greasy joan and company's second theatrical season. Although this marks their first attempt at staging Shakespeare, the young company takes their unusual name from a line in Love's Labour's Lost (V.ii): "while greasy joan doth keel the pot." Witt, from the University of Chicago, began his adaptation of Pericles by editing multiple editions of the quarto version. Seeking clarity and fluidity, Witt re-ordered certain scenes and pruned substantial portions of text. Witt consciously chose to be "aggressively manipulative" in approaching what he calls "the aggressively meta-theatrical" standard text of Pericles. Striving for audience accessibility and dramatic continuity rather than a scholarly new version of Pericles, Witt scrutinized doctoral dissertations dating from as far back as the 1910s, as well as the original sources of the legend. In an interview during the show's run, Witt recounted his consultation of the 6th century Latin version of the tale, itself a translation from Greek, and Shakespeare's sources, from John Gouwer's Middle English Confessio Amanto, to Laurence Twine's The Patterne of Painefull Adventures, a translation from French.
For augmentation of the existing text, however, Witt drew primarily upon George Wilkins' 1608 novella, The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Wilkins' prose version, written shortly after Shakespeare's play but before its official publication in 1623, is essentially a rewrite of the plot. The novella reveals numerous performance choices apparently made by the King's Men during the earliest productions of their play. Witt employed some of Wilkins' re-attribution of lines and reset sections of Wilkins' prose into blank verse. Witt took the most liberty with the role of Lysimachus, who is much more lecherous in the sources, to make more plausible the Governor's transition to heroic bridegroom of Marina.
Witt also directs this production, and he infuses his young ensemble of eight with a great deal of energy and with an eagerness to involve the audience. Within this tiny studio theatre space in Lincoln Park, the cast's earnest enthusiasm becomes infectious, and the unfolding of Pericles' Job-like suffering and privation seems all the more heroic with the intimacy of the staging. Witt focuses on the journeys of Pericles, both in the physical and the emotional senses, emphasizing the values of courage and patience, and how these virtues are ultimately rewarded.
With the exception of Robert McDonough as Pericles, the entire ensemble alternates delivering lines as a choric Gower. This serves to familiarize the audience with the actors as well as to isolate and enhance McDonough's tormented Prince of Tyre. When not immediately involved in the action of the play, the actors stand, sit, and crouch throughout the theatre, at various times in, around, beside, and behind the audience, sometimes interjecting comments or responding to events. When onstage, the ensemble frequently addresses the audience by making eye-contact, winking or smiling.
With just a small cast on hand to portray a plethora of roles, Witt makes some astute doubling decisions to ease his audience's understanding of the (still) at times convoluted plot. For example, greasy joan's artistic director portrays all three Kings that Pericles encounters throughout his journeys, and another actor portrays all three murderous villains. The repetition of familiar faces in similar roles allows for a quicker grasp of inter-relationships, and by judging responses from the audience, Witt's decisions are a success.
Although the tightness of the small ensemble allows for greater quickness in storytelling, most of the major characterizations do not develop beyond a superficial level. The notable exceptions are McDonough's beleaguered but brave Pericles, and Marina, portrayed with a memorable blend of feminine fragility and towering moral strength. Her character's intellect and resolve provide an engaging mirror image of her father, the prince.
The entire cast alternates playing instruments just off-stage. A variety of percussive instruments - drums and cymbals and maracas - enhances the occasional woodwind and contribute with energy to the mysterious Mediterranean atmosphere of the production. Witt also includes a great deal of dancing, and the cast complies with their characteristic abandon, seeming to enjoy the movement and physicality, as revealed by their smiling, hand-clapping, and laughter. Even the combat sequences are energetic and fluid, performed with a sense of humor and punctuated with sudden speed and frequent bursts of martial arts-like shouts.
The set consists of a dark purple mural on the upstage wall that represents the night sky, with its constellations and heavenly bodies painted in sparkling silver. An assortment of nautical nets, ladders, ropes, and crates adorns the small playing area. Weathered planks, as if from the galley of a ship, line the stage floor, but a bright yellow surface, like a sun, is discernible beneath in the gaps between the planks. Metaphorically, the setting represents the glory that can be achieved just beyond the current ugliness of trying circumstances.
Certain planks in the stage are at times removed to reveal maps of various locations drawn on the yellow surface, again to assist modern audiences in following the episodic saga from Antioch, Tyre, and Tharsus, to Pentapolis, Ephesus, and Mytilene. A stage-plank also provides Pericles with his shield, complete with the "in hac spe vivo" logo. In another clever innovation, Thaisa's coffin is fashioned from the stage planks, three of which fold upward and latch together to form the box. After a lid is added, the coffin is brightly lit from beneath, and spears of apparently magical yellow light shoot from the gaps between the wood.
Limited by a small budget and studio space, greasy joan and company's staging of Pericles is praiseworthy as an intellectual attempt to make a romantic and fanciful tale not only palatable and easy to grasp, but profound and relevant to today's audience. This young company's effort at imbuing a difficult and meandering storyline with energy and enthusiasm is praiseworthy, as is their theatrical freshness and innovation.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.15, No.2, Spring 1997.