British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database
Pericles (2000): Ludlow Castle Open Air Theatre
PRINCIPAL CAST: Stephen Beckett (Pericles); Caroline Harvey (Thaisa); Terence Knapp (Antiochus); Patrice Naiambana (Gower); Emily Pithon (Marina); Jasper Wood (Lysimachus).
This production ran from 24 June - 9 July 2000 and was presented as part of the Ludlow Festival.
"Roose-Evans's production constantly stresses the piece's archetypal and ritualistic qualities. It begins and ends with the entire cast in white robes chanting a Latin hymn. The narrator, the poet Gower, is played as an almost Shamanic figure by Patrice Naiambana, and there is constant emphasis on music and the healing arts. It doesn't all work. Pericles is a play of wide horizons with the tang of the sea about it. Here it seems literarily immured within the claustrophobic inner bailey, though Bruno Santini has contributed an effective ship-like stage design." ~ Charles Spencer, "Big questions tackled in a rather small space", Daily Telegraph, 27 June 2000
"The 12th-century ruins of Ludlow Castle's inner bailey prove to be an ideal setting for a play that is partly based on a medieval retelling of this legend and that has, as its narrator figure, the Middle English poet, Gower (played here with a flashing-eyed, infectious enthusiasm by Patrice Naiambana)....James Roose-Evans's production begins and ends with a strong sense of ritual, as the cast - undifferentiated in their cream Indian pyjamas - advance to the footlights intoning liturgical Latin and Greek....The staging has a sturdy simplicity - a swaying tangle of ropes, say, evoking a storm-tossed vessel." ~ Paul Taylor, "Taboo or not taboo: that is the question", Independent, 28 June 2000
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