A merry crew steer this Shakespeare safely home

ON LONDON’S South Bank this week, six professional actors joined an amateur cast of 120 for one of the year’s fizzier Shakespearean shows.

Not that there was much raw Shakespeare in this Pericles. The text was substantially gutted and replaced by modern songs.

We had a gospel choir, Bulgarian folk singing (rather good), kazoos, a barn dance clap- along, Indian Bhavan drumming, cheerleaders, a Ska band and more.

Shakespeare’s story of a seatossed hero whom fate bats from shore to shore was bent to a message about refugees and multiculturism and how we should all be kind to one another.

The whole thing ended with the entire cast on stage — an impressive sight — singing ‘there can be no home where there’s no heart’.

As a one-time am-drammer, I am all in favour of community theatrics. Taking part in a play, front or backstage, can be tremendous for bonding, self- esteem, emotional discovery and general sodality. The civilians who participated in this Pericles will never forget it.

Ashley Zhangazha kept things rolling along with his title performance and he was well supported by Audrey Brisson playing Pericles’s daughter, Marina, in adulthood.

As in community pantomimes and school plays, there were ‘ahhs’ from the audience (many of them family members, I suspect) when smaller child-actors did their stuff.

Performers were clapped for taking part, and that is fine. The evening’s philosophical message, after all, was that anything is valid.

The National staged this show under an outreach initiative called Public Acts, and it certainly opened its physical stage to a wider range of actors.