Pericles Reviews
Stage and Cinema- Recommended
"...The groundlings who attended William Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre back in 1608 (or 1619, hard to nail these dates down) would certainly have gotten their penny’s worth, as did the audience at the West Coast premiere of Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation, Pericles, now at Boston Court Pasadena."
Stage Scene LA- Highly Recommended
"...Ten strangers seeking refuge from a storm in a disaster relief center find much in common with their displaced Shakespearean counterparts in Boston Court Pasadena’s thrillingly inventive staging of Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation of Pericles."
Stage Raw- Highly Recommended
"...It takes an intrepid director to make sense of such a play, and director Margaret Shigeko Starbuck has daring to spare. Working from Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation, Starbuck boldly tackles multiple challenges in her current production at the Boston Court — a resourceful and clever staging that delights from start to finish."
Colorado Boulevard- Highly Recommended
"...Pericles in particular is very rarely staged or read, due to its difficult, purposefully archaic language. The logline: Pericles, an ancient prince of Tyre, sails the world, finds and loses a bride or two, then a daughter, then finds some happiness at the end. Director Margaret Shigeko Starbuck indicated that even Globe audiences of 1605 would have stumbled over the old-fashioned, medieval narrator character of Gower and the 1,000-year-old source material about a wandering Phoenician prince. Updating it “so that you can understand it without the footnotes” was Douthit’s entire point."
Nerds Of Color- Somewhat Recommended
"...By attempting to fuse modern dialogue with Shakespearean language, it creates an off-putting rhythm that isn’t helped by the direction’s contrived ‘play within a play’ concept, which would have served the story better if told directly."