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.

Plotwise, this lesser-known Shakespearean tragicomedy (much of which was apparently not written by Shakespeare) is a bit of a mishmash.

You’ve got (in alphabetical order) an attempted assassination, a corpse that’s not yet dead, famine, incest, jousts, kidnapping, ocean storms, pirates, prostitution, and more than one shipwreck—to name just some of its disparate elements..

And it is no more cohesive where style is concerned given its mix of tragedy, comedy, adventure, fairy tale, and myth, making it all the riper for reinvention, a task that director Margaret Shigeko Starbuck proves more than capable of achieving.

Michelle Joo’s gymnasium-turned-emergency evacuation center cues us in from the get-go that this won’t be your grandparents’ Shakespeare as storm escapees arrive one by one, and when one of them discovers a copy of Pericles, he enlists the participation of his fellow refugees to bring the Odyssey-like adventure to life using only the equipment at hand to stage the tale.

Randolph Thompson gets assigned the role of our titular hero, who finds himself on the run following his discovery that King Antiochus of Antioch is involved in incestuous hanky-panky with none other than his own daughter.

Shipwrecked in Pentapolis, Pericles proves victorious in a joust (executed here with swimming pool noodles!) whose prize is the hand of the lovely Princess Thaisa (Nicole Javier).

Then, heading back to his homeland with a pregnant bride by his side, Pericles sees Thaisa give birth to a daughter while onboard a storm-tossed ship (hence the baby’s name Marina) upon which Thaisa promptly dies, or so Pericles thinks.

Fortunately for Thaisa (buried at sea in a watertight coffin), her “death” turns out to be more than a bit of an overreaction, since she is promptly brought back to life by Cerimon of Ephesus (Desiree Mee Jung).

Less fortunately (since she believes her husband to have died at sea), Thaisa joins the holy order of the Sisters Of Diana where she remains in seclusion for the next sixteen years.

Little does Thaisa realize that Marina (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson) is alive and well and a gorgeous teenager whose beauty has so raised the jealous ire of Dionyza of Tarsus (Jung again) that she orders a servant to take Marina on a cruise and kill her.

Luckily for Marina, a band of pirates arrive to abduct the beauty just in the nick of time, though her luck proves short-lived when said pirates promptly sell her into a life of prostitution.

If all this sounds more than a bit of a tangled tale, it is, but what matters most at Boston Court isn’t Pericles’s hodgepodge of a plot but the supremely imaginative way director Starbuck and her cast have brought it to exhilarating life, and never more so than when ship meets storm in a sequence it would take Hollywood millions upon millions to shoot and wouldn’t be nearly as exciting.

Thompson’s commanding, moving performance in the title role is just one of ten high-voltage star turns from a cast completed by Jamie Gallo (Thaliard, Leonine, & Others), Julanne Chidi Hill (Helicanus, Bawd), Alexander Matos (Lysimachus & Others), Rio Rasch (Bolt & Others), Adam J. Smith (Cleon, Pander), and Joel Swetow (Gower), all of whom work their butts off. (Pardon my French.)

Movement director Estela Garcia adds to the excitement every step of the way as does sound designer-composer-music director John Ballinger, whose mix of action-adventure underscoring and effects is as thrilling as it gets.

Add to that the inestimable design contributions of Rye Mandel (props), Pablo Santiago (lighting), and Nala Zinngrabe (costumes) and you’ve got William Shakespeare like you’ve never seen or heard him before.

Pericles is presented in partnership with Play On Shakespeare. Grace Wilkerson is assistant director. You Chen Zhang is associate set designer and Jennifer Gonzalez is associate lighting designer. Eric Swartz is production manager. Jesse Soto is technical director. Yaesol Jeong is stage manager and Jaclyn Gehringer is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Nicole Arbusto.

Were Hollywood given a shot at filming Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation of Shakespeare’s Pericles, they’d probably insist on tons of international location shooting on massive sets with a cast of thousands and a whole lot of CGI.

Not so at Boston Court Pasadena, where imagination reigns supreme and the results are every bit as electrifying.

Boston Court Pasadena, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Through September 27. Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30. Saturdays at 2:00 and 7:30. Sundays at 2:00. Also select Mondays at 7:30
www.BostonCourtPasadena.org

–Steven Stanley
August 29, 2026
Photos: Brian Hashimoto

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Boston Court Pasadena, Ellen McLaughlin, Los Angeles Theater Review, Play On Shakespeare, William Shakespeare