The new RSC team's first season ends with half an Artistic Director finally making a debut as unlikely and understated as the rest of the summer run has been: One of the most obscure plays to just about scrape into the canon, the one Shakespeare himself was so invested in he entrusted half the writing to some pimp he met down the pub. Tamara Harvey hasn't directed at the RSC before, so starting in the smaller Swan also seems a sensibly measured way of getting used to the company's deep thrust stages. In context though there
is something audacious about the choice of
Pericles as her opening salvo - a play perceived as so unpopular that both her predecessors dealt with it by announcing they were going to stage it, then hoping nobody would notice when they didn't. In this meandering late romance Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Startled Giraffe Alfred Enoch) sets out on a variety of fairytale quests to win princesses with, it's probably fair to say, varying results.
