Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… the 1984 BBC Pericles

February 17, 2018

It’s a bit disappointing to learn that the most famous cricketing reference in the Shakespearean canon – “From Ashes, Ancient Gower is come… ” probably wasn’t written by Shakespeare at all, but by George Wilkins – the eclectic chancer most editors regard as responsible for much of the first half of Pericles Prince of Tyre.

In this production, Ancient Gower is played by Edward Petherbridge – whom you might remember as the heartbreakingly tender Newman Noggs in the very great David Edgar RSC production of Nicholas Nickleby. As Gower, Petheredge affects an archaic rustic accent which sounds almost mid-Atlantic at times and which, together with his hirsute appearance, reminds me of nobody so much as the benign old hippy who used to present Fingerbobs. This sort of stilted kindliness helps steer us through very stormy waters, because (let’s face it), Pericles is choppy, discontinuous, confusing sort of play, set in port cities and rough seas across much of the eastern Mediterranean.

Another star of Nicholas Nickelby is here – John Woodvine – who plays the incestuous tyrant of Antioch. He’s not on for long, which is the fault of the rather episodic and discontinuous nature of the play – but he’s long enough to exercise his established talent for po-faced villainy. Good king Simonides, meanwhile, is given the familiar face and far far more familiar voice of Patrick Allen. Patrick Allen, you’ll recall, was responsible for being the last surviving voice of authority in the UK in the case of full scale nuclear war in the 1980s. The voice who would have been instructing you how to pointlessly prolong the agonising lives of your family members in an apocalyptic wasteland was the voice of Patrick Allen. Like all voices of nightmarish despair, this voice was often co-opted for sublimely comic purposes and he did some delicious narrative links for Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. Patrick Allen booms his benevolence and the pompous pleasure he takes in helping to get Thaisa and Pericles hitched evokes a sense of some pagan fertility god rather than a mortal monarch.

You can also spot Clive Swift here as a benign Ephesian medical genius. Trevor Peacock, who had excelled as Feste in the 1980 BBC Twelfth Night and played Talbot and Jack Cade in the outstanding Jane Howell Henry VI stagings is here as the brothel bouncer Boult, and is permitted a partial repentance that is astonishingly persuasive – given how few little time and how few lines Peacock has to effect this transformation.

Patrick Rycart appeared in they first of these BBC Shakespeares as Romeo where the age gap between him and a very very young Juliet caused (and causes) some legitimate concern. He’s more confident here as Lysimachus, Governor of Mytilene, and the age gap between him and Amanda Redman’s Marina seems less obtrusive.

Juliet Stephenson is Thaisa – a difficult role since it’s so brief. She is paraded before jousters, she falls in love, marries, seemingly dies at sea, is miraculously restored, and becomes an Ephesian Diana votary all with seemingly little internal reflection. Like many characters in this maritime epic – she basically just goes with the flow. The character of her daughter Marina (who scholars would agree benefits from Shakespeare’s rather than Wilkins’ dialogue) has a rather better time of it and is given far more time and far more words to express herself.

Amanda Redman’s most challenging task is to help make the brothel scenes as terrifying as they are hilarious. The notion that a girl could be so virtuous that she not only dissuades clients from wanting to have sex with her, she dissuades them from ever wanting to entertain the idea of having transgressive extramarital sex ever again – thus destroying entire red light district’s economy – is undeniably funny. The horrific concomitant suggestion – that Marina can be raped into acquiescence – is terrifying and disgusting. Now there’s nothing wrong with sick and terrifying comedy so long as dramatists and actors know how sick and terrifying the comedy is. Somehow, Redman’s Marina manages to seduce and chasten at one and the same time – to seduce with virtue – to make virtue seductive. Redman’s Marina makes celibacy sexier than sex itself. And so it is that Trevor Peacock’s Boult spends five minutes in a bedroom with her before deciding to give her money to set up a girls’ school.

Annette Crosbie’s Dionyza rivals John Woodvine’s incestuous tyrant for title of most evil character in the play. When you plot the murder of the daughter of the guy who saved your entire city from starvation just because she’s a bit more popular than your own daughter… you’re dealing with a kind of extremity of malevolence that is startling even in a Shakespearean context. Crosbie’s Dionyza can smile and smile and be a villain. Worse still (or better – from Crosbie’s perspective), she can rationalise anything. Absolutely anything.

In the title role is Mike Gwylim who also plays Berowne in the BBC Loves Labours Lost. If he seems like a square-jawed cipher for much of the first half of the play, the somewhat clunky quality of some of Wilkins’ writing is probably to blame. As a shipwreck victim, he manages to tie with Anton Lesser (Edgar: King Lear) for the title of “most nearly naked person in the whole BBC Shakespeare project”. Only when Pericles collapses into an extremity of grief and really lets himself go, does Mike Gwylim get a chance to do some real acting. T.S. Eliot, who was sometimes write about some things, notes that the Pericles-Marina recognition scene is the most exquisite of all of Shakespeare’s slow recognition scenes. If it formed part of a more frequently staged play, the scene would be far more famous than it is. This scene between Gwylim and Amanda Redman is the highlight of the production – but it is very very hard for this scene not to be the highlight of any production of this play.

The design of this production is very spare, which is probably just as well. It’s set in a vague and beige near eastern setting within which various Hellenistic city states seem to be made of the same sandy blocks re-stacked in slightly different configurations. The very confusion and similarities of ports forms part of the mood of the play – a mood of escalating sea-sickness. Perhaps least effective set is the final scene depicting the Temple of Ephesus – which certainly does not resemble one of the wonders of the ancient world. But this is a short scene, and its wobbly inadequacy segues nicely into a concluding homily from Ancient Gower.

In short, David Jones (wisely) makes no attempt to make this play less strange and confusing than it really is. Its artifice is laid bare and its sometimes wearisome length is referenced in the length and disorder of Pericles’ unkempt and unprincely hair.

With such spare staging, there is little to distract from the performances, with the exception of some very necessary and very lovely music. The fact that Amanda Redman has an enchanting singing voice goes much to explain a deal that is otherwise incredible and the “music of the spheres” that plays as Pericles struggles to contain the inrush of sudden restorative joy ought to bring a tear to the eye of any human less evil than Antiochus or Dionyza.

I’ve some thoughts about some other productions in the 1978-1985 BBC Shakespeare series.

Like Twelfth Night: