'Pericles' at American Players Theatre: Through crazy accents, keeping the Bard's rhyme and reason

Posted September 19, 2017

By Lawrence B. Johnson, Chicago on the Aisle

September 18, 2017

SPRING GREEN, Wis. — To use Shakespeare and farce in the same sentence is almost certainly to think of “The Comedy of Errors,” and maybe patches of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Probably not, however, the late romantic adventure tale “Pericles, Prince of Tyre.” But it is precisely a generous infusion of over-the-top silliness that makes such endearing stuff of “Pericles” at American Players Theatre.

As with “Timon of Athens,” written around the same time, scholars have long questioned just how much of this late play is actually by Shakespeare. Again as in the case of “Timon,” the consensus is that another writer penned the first part of “Pericles” and Shakespeare contributed the last two-thirds or so. Indeed, “Pericles” was excluded from the First Folio of Shakespeare’s collected plays – which appeared in 1623, seven years after his death – and only came to be produced with any regularity in modern times.

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