Reading this improbable episodic play – which spans decades and oceans, which creaks with coincidences and contrivances, and which needs periodic dumb shows and a chorus (in the figure of Gower) to give lengthy explanations of what is going on – convinces one that it is impossible to stage, or at least to stage successfully. Adrian Noble triumphantly and brilliantly proves otherwise. He turns the Roundhouse into an Oriental palace, hung with beautiful lamps and carpeted with rich tapestries, the towering space above adrift with curling wreathes of incense; and in this lusciously attractive space produces a fast-paced, gripping tale of virtue's triumph over vice and vicissitude. He is ably helped by the marvellous acting talents of Brian Protheroe as the presiding genius of Gower, a robust and engaging Ray Fearon as Pericles, and the delightful Kananu Kirimi as Marina, along with an impeccable cast in support. 
      Pericles seeks the hand of the daughter of King Antiochus, despite the danger of the enterprise, for all suitors risk death instead of marriage if they fail to understand a riddle Antiochus has set. The riddle is intended to protect the king's incestuous relationship with his daughter, by implicitly avowing it. Pericles understands and is horrified by the hidden message – and when Antiochus sees this, Pericles knows that his life is in danger. Thus begins a series of travels and travails in his attempt to escape Antiochus's murderous intent. In the course of them he wins the beautiful Thaisa in a joust, and marries her only to lose her soon afterwards, she dying in a storm at sea during which their daughter Marina – hence the name – is born. (Shipwrecks are a constant in this tale, being the main means of precipitating Pericles into his various adventures, like an especially unlucky Odysseus.) Pericles leaves Marina with Cleon and Dionyza at Tharsus, for they owe him a favour – he saved their city from famine years before. But Dionyza is jealous of the beautiful and accomplished Marina, who eclipses her own daughter in the eyes of the world, and so plots to have her murdered. But Marina is rescued by pirates – equivocally rescued, as it turns out, for they sell her to a brothel. There she preserves her virginity by talking prospective clients out of their lust, and converting them to goodness, much to the rage of the brothel keepers. Through a set of coincidences and dei ex machina she and her father Pericles are reunited, and then both of them with Thaisa who – despite being flung into the sea in a coffin – is of course still alive, having been washed up at Ephesus where a magician-medical-man, Cerimon, revives her. Her whereabouts are revealed to Pericles in a dream by no less a messenger than the goddess Diana. So all ends happily. 
      So told, the tale can do no justice to the exciting, moving, amusing, absorbing spectacle Noble has wrought on stage. When Pericles and Marina are reunited it is hard to repress the tears, so touching is the scene and so tenderly portrayed. Every good thing in the writing – theory has it that only the last three of the five acts are by Shakespeare – is made to do its magic, and in Brian Protheroe's paradigmatic speaking of the lines the magic is potent. It is a brilliant production, and a must-see: Pericles is rarely enough staged, and no staging could much better this one.
AC Grayling