Pericles 2014
Simon Bell’s Pericles, last year, was very exciting for me as I had never seen it
live before. I went to the opening night and one of the late performances in its
run. I thoroughly enjoyed it the first time but it had grown noticeably in stature
by the second time. When Tessa Hatts, playing Gower, the ‘chorus’ figure, exuberantly
exclaimed "I am in the play!" it drew an immediate, spontaneous burst of applause
from the entranced audience.
It is far from the first time that I have seen a play at the CSF twice, but it was
first time I have done so from the same position. Nothing was different, then, in
my situation, yet it seemed much had changed onstage. This may have been partly
because I did not notice "smaller" things on my first viewing but I think mainly
it was that the cast and director had evolved their production, there definitely
were new elements (biting the "corpse", for one) and the ‘minor characters’ were
much more expressive. However, this is not to say that they had not got it pretty
much bang-on from day one.
I should like to stress that I really enjoyed the opening night of Pericles, too.
I thought that structurally it worked well and two main characters, by that I mean
Gower (Tessa Hatts) and Pericles (Max Sterne), and the interaction between them was
exceptionally well done. However, as may be expected, it was an even more pleasurable
experience two weeks later.
