Stratford director adds new character to Shakespeare's Pericles
Making good theatre of Shakespeare's The Adventures of Pericles is no easy task, says director Scott Wentworth.
"The script of Pericles is a notoriously corrupt script. It's in terrible shape," Wentworth says.
"The modern equivalent would be if someone snuck a smartphone into a movie and turned it on and then was hiding it from the movie manager, people were talking loud in front, you couldn't hear all the dialogue, you couldn't see everything — and then you had to sort of figure it out."
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Scholars generally agree Pericles was a collaboration of sorts with English dramatist George Wilkins, with Wilkins writing the first third and Shakespeare the rest.
The manuscript wasn't included in the First Folio, a collection of Shakespear's plays that was published in 1623, and contains some pretty major inconsistencies, according to Wentworth.
"This person says 'have a good trip' and the other person hasn't said he's going anywhere yet. Things are in the wrong order, things are obviously omitted so it's a bit of a mess.
"So every director and every group of actors that comes to it really has to massage this text in a way that you don' t have to with any other Shakespeare play."
To smooth out those rough spots, Wentworth replaced the Chorus role, represented by poet John Gower, with a new character: the Goddess Diana.
He recruited his wife, Marion Adler, to play the part. She also collaborated with Paul Shilton on a song that is called for in the script — but doesn't actually exist.
Hear how it plays out, in the audio below.