Deborah Strang (Gower) and the Chorus from Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Photo by Craig Schwartz
“Pay What You Can” tickets are available for A Noise Within’s production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre this Thursday September 12 at 7:30 PM. Tickets must be purchased in person, at the Box Office after 2:00 PM on the day of the performance. Cash only. Subject to availability. Pericles will officially open Saturday, Sept. 14 and run through November 24, 2013.
In its day, Pericles was one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays – stuffed full of all kinds of adventurous effects to satisfy his audience: pirates, storms, kidnapping, brothels, prostitution, incest, murder plots complete with assassins, famine (resolved by lots of ears of corn), battles, broken engagements, burning to death by fire from heaven, bodies tossed overboard (only to be discovered alive when they wash up on shore), unlikely reunions, the appearance of an actual goddess, and of course, a virgin.
Producing Artistic Director Geoff Elliott says, “It is really the Elizabethan era’s idea of what we know today as a smash-hit summer movie – a play of spectacle and wonder. It was their Pirates of the Caribbean, filled with spectacular stage effects including two, count ‘em, two shipwrecks.”
Considered a romance, the story begins when Pericles must answer a riddle, placed before him by King Antiochus, to win the hand of a princess. He quickly surmises that all answers present their own perils, so he chooses another solution – to go on a long ocean voyage. Like Homer’s The Odyssey, Pericles presents a hero triumphing over his travails, as well as symbolic figures that transcend time periods and cultures. For more information visit www.anoisewithin.org.
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