Pericles (BBC Radio 3 Drama On 3)

By: William Shakespeare

Narrated by: Benjamin Zephaniah, Helen Longworth, Tom Mannion

A BBC Radio 3 full-cast dramatisation of Shakespeare’s classic ‘Pericles’, starring Tom Mannion. Originally broadcast in November 2005 and repeated as part of the ‘Drama on 3’ collection in November 2008. Shakespeare's romantic adventure full of tyrants, incest, murder, knights, teenagers, pirates, brothels, sublime poetry, young love, a great hero and the goddess Diana. A multicultural cast, world music and the poet Benjamin Zephaniah give this timeless tale a contemporary twist. With Tom Mannion as Pericles, Benjamin Zephaniah as Gower, Raad Rawi as Antiochus and Cerimon, and Helen Longworth as Marina and Antiochus' daughter. Also starring Sean Scanlan, Dermot Crowley, Paul Dinnen, Lorcan Cranitch, Katherine Igoe, Adjoa Andoh, Peter Gevisser, Siân Phillips, Ayesha Antoine, Nick Sayce, Ifan Meredith and Delroy Brown. Directed by Gaynor MacFarlane.

Adequate

This is a competent performance of Pericles that never becomes anything more interesting than that. The actors all seem to know what they're doing, but don't seem especially excited to be doing it.

Some notes:

The text is cut fairly heavily and occasionally rearranged, so avoid this recording if you're an extreme purist.

There is an range of accents on display (Gower is Caribbean, the Tharsians are African, Pericles is Scottish, etc.) which is cool, but some of them take some getting used to.

The sound ambience is a little odd; in some of the scenes the characters sound like they're talking inside tiny little rooms, which doesn't really gel with the play's epic scope.

In summary, it's fine, and - let's face it - recordings of Pericles are hard to find, so beggars can't be choosers.