Pericles Reviews at the RSC starring Alfred Enoch

"The RSC has an unlikely hit on their hands"

"Shakespeare’s obscure picaresque pantomime is a bold choice, but it’s one that has paid off with this triumphant production"

"Pericles, a picaresque pantomime of a late romance fallen into such obscurity now that even Shakespeare himself would be hard pushed to recall the myriad improbable plot twists, is given a robust dusting down by Harvey, to triumphant results. I have not heard an RSC audience applaud a Shakespeare play with such genuine warmth for a very long time."

"Enoch gives a strong turn of shining honesty that reaches its apotheosis in the heartening final scenes, which are ever more redolent of The Winter’s Tale. Despite the lovable daftness of events, we find ourselves quietly cheering for this unshakably decent man who might, at last, find peace and a fixed abode."

"Alfred Enoch rules the stage in a neglected Shakespeare"

"Tamara Harvey’s first production as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s co-artistic director highlights the play’s sharp political intelligence"

"Tamara Harvey, in her first production as RSC co-artistic director, cannot disguise the play’s peculiarities but proves its beauties to be equally deep and its political intelligence acute. In the context of the leadership contest, Alfred Enoch’s title performance tantalisingly shows a candidate rare in today’s nations – youthful, humorous, smart, commanding, supremely eloquent."

"Rachelle Diedericks’ Marina matches Enoch’s clarity and radiance and the eventual scenes between them are at least as moving as a more celebrated family reunion in The Winter’s Tale."

"Pericles could not have been done better but even this brainy, graceful staging can not admit the play to the core canon."

"... Harvey’s magical production lets you see both why it was so popular when it first appeared around 1607 – there’s a lot of fun in its multiple incidents – and why it deserves reviving. With grace and control, she makes the case that it is a play about a young man (Pericles) and a young woman (his daughter Marina) finding their way in a world that is full of danger, yet responds to their essential goodness and desire to do the right thing."

"The first scenes struggle to find their footing on Jonathan Fensom’s set, strung with taut ropes that are like a lyre... But Alfred Enoch’s Pericles engages from the very beginning. He is an actor of remarkable complicit openness, a gentle presence who consistently conveys fleeting thought and feeling by his natural ease and warmth. He draws the audience into his journey and from the moment we arrive at the court of Simonides, played by Christian Patterson with vitality and superb comic timing, the production grips."

"Harvey’s masterstroke is to give the lines of Gower – the poet who narrates the action, spanning huge jumps in time and place – to Rachelle Diedericks, who eventually transforms into Pericles’s grown-up daughter Marina. Diedericks also combines a telling clarity with language with a directness of emotional approach, and in making her so central, Harvey ties diffused events together with bonds of silk."

"Wholesome revival"

"It’s a dream-like and sometimes nightmarish folk tale which can defy producers, actors and audiences alike. However this production, by the RSC’s new Co-Artistic Director Tamara Harvey, brings calm, elegance and clarity."

"In the midst of the theatrical swell, Alfred Enoch makes a squeaky-clean Pericles: he is tall, handsome, smiling, and yet tortured by fate. Leah Haile plays his eventual wife."

"The result is a wholesome revival that disperses the play’s sometimes sickly toxins."

"Quietly pertinent"

"Tamara Harvey’s first production as Royal Shakespeare Company head is slow to find its sea legs"

"It’s straight-up, tell-the-story theatre, with Alfred Enoch’s noble, sensible, distinctly normal Pericles moving wide-eyed through the world. But while the production goes at a clip, it isn’t always crisp enough, or lively enough, for that storytelling to keep you completely absorbed. Sometimes swathes of verse went by me like a wave, rather than really landing."

"To help swirl things along, there’s also much stylised and slo-mo reaching, stretching, yearning movement, directed by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster. Distilled moments can be gorgeous (and gorgeously lit by Ryan Day), but it can also give earnest drama-school-exercise vibes. I longed for more heat or urgency between Pericles and his wife Thaisa, rather than such elegant portentousness."

"The production may not conspicuously strive for modern-day relevance, but amid the bleakness of the current anti-immigration riots, it’s a reminder of the duty to welcome those who arrive in need feels quietly pertinent."

"Riddles and shipwrecks in lesser-known Shakespeare"

"A nobleman finds himself caught up in marital troubles, brothels and tempests"

"It’s a tale of wonder, of lost identity, Odyssean wanderings, coincidence, peril and perfidy."

"Alfred Enoch is an agile, clear-speaking Pericles anchoring the mayhem, movingly suggesting how the years change him into a sadder, wearier creature. Pericles, with its fleeting elements of later, more fully achieved plays such as The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale, is a fascinating interim piece."

"A tasteful take on Shakespeare’s flimsy romance"

"At Stratford-upon-Avon, the RSC’s visual charm, subtle music and strong cast can’t distract from the issues with the story itself in the Bard’s weak work"

"The RSC’s new co-artistic director Tamara Harvey oversees an utterly tasteful, masque-like production where you can admire individual elements without being convinced that they add up to a truly satisfying whole. There’s certainly lots of visual charm."

"Still, it’s not quite enough to distract attention from the flimsiness of the story itself. Alfred Enoch, one of several actors making their RSC debut, is a likeably boyish presence in the early scenes, although it’s the more seasoned members of the cast who make the strongest impression."

"Harvey casts the story in a ritualistic light, combining declamatory voices with the frieze-like interweaving of courtiers and humble citizens overseen by the movement director Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster. The technique is imposing in small doses, but in an overlong evening it’s a little like being subjected to a two-and-a-half-hour version of the play within a play in Hamlet."

"A fairytale take on Pericles"

"It is not hard to see why Pericles is seldom produced... As it is, there is more description of action than real development. There is no central pulse. This makes it ripe for takeover by directors with concepts."

"... Tamara Harvey is having none of that. No updating, no underlining of modern echoes. Her production emphasises the fairytale wonders and absurdities of the play, lacing it with humour. The result, after a slow start, is attractive but not urgent."

"The verse, as intermittent as the plot, is particularly well delivered by Alfred Enoch, who makes Pericles innocent, open and guileless without ever seeming merely a pushover. In an illuminating departure, the role of narrator, traditionally a crusty old chap, is given to Rachelle Diedericks’s finely candid, direct Marina, the lost daughter reclaiming her voice. Christian Patterson cheers things along as a rumble-voiced comic Simonides."