I just saw another performance in Carmel. This time I saw a Shakespeare play called Pericles: Prince of Tyre. I hadn’t heard of this one before. Shakespeare is purported to have written about 50% of it and it is one of his lesser known works.
For me, and for many, Shakespearean speak is really hard to follow so if you’re going to see a Shakespeare play, I definitely recommend you read a summary or the cliff notes so you’ll know what’s going on, especially if you don’t know what it’s about. I listened to the audiobook of Pericles and read the cliff notes the night before the show.
I’ve been to a few Shakespeare plays recently. I saw my first Shakespeare play, Macbeth, just last year when I was in Vancouver, BC. Then I saw Hamlet, Richard II, and Gertrude and Claudius (not an actual Shakespeare play but a prequel to Hamlet) earlier this year when I was in Orlando, FL.
Going into this play, I was expecting much of the same: period clothing and a regular play. But when the lights were turned down and the play began, I was pleasantly surprised. It started off with 3 women harmonizing and then they had turned the beginning spoken prologue into a musical number set to a jazzy tune. They had turned it into a musical and made it into a more modern adaptation! The actors wore modern clothing. They still spoke the regular Shakespearean lines but sometimes they had accents (like a southern accent). Throughout the show, an eclectic array of instruments were played including an accordion, a banjo, cymbals, a mandolin, a cajun, a guitar and a few others. The acting, singing and music were all wonderfully done.
Suffice to say, I absolutely loved this production of Pericles put on by the Pacific Repertory Theatre (Pacific Repertory Theatre). Unfortunately, anyone who wants to see this production can’t because this was the last show. So glad I was able to catch it!