About the Adaptation

By Dr. David Bevington
Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in Humanities, University of Chicago & Court Theatre Trustee

The Romance Cycle at Court Theatre has been woven together in a very astute way in Charlie Newell's new and exciting adaptation. The idea of having a chorus figure named Gower from Pericles introduce both plays, starting with Cymbeline, is brilliant, making both plays into a continuous fable of olden time. Equally successful is the idea of introducing a gentleman of the Court interacting with the chorus at the start of Cymbeline who fill the audience in on some very necessary plot information; their conversation weaves together comments with an account of the story we need to know.

The adaptation does a fine job of highlighting King Cymbeline's Queen as a larger-than- life wicked queen, straight out of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." We are then introduced to the wicked Queen's son, the laughably inept but menacing Cloten. The scene shifts to Italy, where we see the play's young hero, Posthumus Leonatus, get into serious trouble by making a bet with the evil Iachimo that Posthumus' wife, Imogen (daughter of King Cymbeline) is unassailably virtuous. Newell's adaptation gives particular emphasis to the scenes in which Iachimo travels to England, discovers that Imogen is indeed chaste, and manages nevertheless to gather enough private information about her to "prove" to Posthumus that Imogen has been won to Iachimo's lust. The chorus figure, Gower, returns at key points to provide a needed continuity for the story.

At this point the script moves on energetically to mountainous Wales, where Imogen encounters the exiled Belarius and two young men who turn out to be very important in bringing about the play's happy ending. Another big scene in Newell's adaptation is the one in which the loathsome Cloten is slain by one of the young men, is beheaded, and is then mistaken by Imogen to be the headless corpse of her husband. The adaptation makes a fine thing of the play's songs, including "Fear no more the heat of the sun." The play is expertly compressed in a way that reduces the battle scenes at the end and focuses instead on the awesome appearance to Posthumus of the god Jupiter.

The adapted version of Pericles picks up nicely with a unifying repetition of "To sing a song" recited by old Gower. The powerful scenes of this play begin with a vivid account of incest in the court of King Antiochus and his guilty daughter. Newell's trimming skillfully leaves out some confusing material and clumsy writing, some of which may not be by Shakespeare in any case. Quickly the adaptation presses on to the court of King Simonides and his virtuous daughter Thaisa, and to the good-natured fishermen who help Pericles to recover the armor in which he will become a successful contestant for Thaisa's hand in marriage. The contrast between Simonides and Antiochus is nicely enhanced by the cutting.

We then move on to a compelling scene aboard ship with the seeming death of Thaisa and her being committed to the sea, only to be brought back to life by the wise magician Cerimon. Gower helps carry the transition forward to the story of Pericles's daughter Marina in her encounters with the wicked Dionyza, pirates, and eventually a brothel. The script devotes much attention to the brothel scenes, and especially to the visit of Governor Lysimachus, who is converted by Marina's unassailable virtue. And of course the adaptation gives a major emphasis to Marina's scene of reunion with Pericles on board the pirate ship.

The parallel appearances of Diana in Pericles and Jupiter in Cymbeline are astutely underscored by presenting them as a single event and, in plays that pare down to the most dramatic essentials, revealing these symmetries in the late plays. The overall theatrical effect is really quite lovely.