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Wednesday, April 18, 2001 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER C1 20- 40%3 ISSRP ·Look for our liver in Itie toi l Upper E V liiliIlt : Itu a d East ·l l | i | i e r U a k v i l l e tt tu ip iiin u O n i i l r t j " Entertainment Oakville Beaver A&E Editor: Carol Baldwin 845-3824 (Ext. 254); Fax: 337-5567; E-maii: bakiwin@hattonsearch.com Photo by Riziero Vertolli V ( 9 0 5 ) 3 3 7 8 5 P2 Pericles will wash ashore on the banks of Coronation Park By Carol Baldwin ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR I f William Shakespeare had known what John Wood knows, he may never have penned plays to be performed in the Globe Theatre. Although "all the world" may not be Wood's stage for this year's Shakespeare presentation in Coronation Park, the outdoor stage by the lake is not as limiting as an indoor stage can be. "You can do it like a film because you've got so much distance," he explains. "You start seeing things at a much greater distance than you do in the theatre because (in the theatre) you've got wing space, and you can't go beyond the space." This summer, however, Wood can cut a wide path and create sweeping entrances and exits or use a real shoreline in a shipwreck scene. And he enjoys pushing those bounds, utilizing the natur al elements in the park to set his stage. In fact, Wood selected the century-old willow tree as the foundation for the Festival o f Classics' stage in its inaugural year. Now, six years later, he is returning to his cho sen natural stage for what is now known as the Royal Bank Festival of Classics to entertain an audience that has grown steadily each year since he first brought A Midsummer N ig h t' s Dream to Oakville's outdoor summer theatre. This year, Wood will be part o f another first for the Coronation Park production - the first romance. The first five years of the festival fea tured Shakespearean comedies. However, Wood is convinced that Pericles, Prince o f Tyre, will be an easier sell than its comedic predecessors. "It's a rarely done Shake speare, and you don't get a chance to see it that often. And it's a great story," he says. "It's a romance, but there's some very funny stuff in it." One of the reasons Wood suggested Pericles is that, like its predecessors, it is ideal for the venue and "it was on the list for the future," he says. It is also one of those plays that still begs the ques tion - did Shakespeare write it or didn't he? Wood, seemingly on a roll for firsts, has man aged to accelerate Pericles to the top of the festi val's list of plays-to-do and readily admits that he's not sure how much of this play the Bard had a hand in writing. "Probably Shakespeare wrote three-quarters o f it. It was not included in the first folio," he says. "It's not a bad writer who's writing it. There's some wonderful stuff in it, but it doesn't have the poetry that takes flight the way it does in the second half...Probably he got involved in it, and then went back and had a hand in some of the bits and pieces...until he got to the third act. And then you can see his imagination and some similarities in what he's writing here and what he's written in other plays." Pericles, also the name of the main character in the play, is the tale of a young man, aged 19 or 20, fleeing from a king who wants Pericles dead because he knows the king is having incestuous relations with his daughter. This journey to escape certain death, turns into a 15-year odyssey in which Pericles matures through a series o f life-altering experiences. And, as in all Shakespearean plays, there are many twists and turns and, of course, secrets and mis understandings along the way. Comparing Pericles to Job in The Bible, Wood refers to him as heroic -- someone who would "never do anything that you would question...You trust the integrity o f Pericles." Director John Wood leans against the centu ry-old willow tree which, he says, `i s the cen tre of the stage. Basically it's about the tree." People strolling along the shore in Coronation Park or an airplane flying overhead during the production adds to the authenticity of the action, he says. "It's real." Much like the first five festival productions, Pericles lends itself to the outdoor stage, says the veteran director. "It's so much about nature. It's right there around you. So, if you think about that, Pericles makes a lot of sense, because all of it takes place by the seashore. It takes place out side. And even things that do take place inside, you can bring outside." Once the decision-makers selected Pericles, Wood says he began to see images of the pro duction as it unfolded in the park. "There is something so contemporary about the park and actually timeless about doing the play in nature that you don't have to remind people that it was written 400 years ago," he explains, adding that he isn't quite sure what two decades he plans to set the play in, but they will be the 20th centu ry. "There is something about all Shakespeare's plays, I think, that lend themselves to being told now. You don't have to put Elizabethan costumes on or put it into an ancient time period." Pericles' extensive traveling, Woods adds, allows the time period to fluctuate. For example, even today, travelers could visit India, Egypt and Iran and think they had traveled back in time. Also, many place names occur in more than one country - Troy, for example, can be found in Turkey as well as New York, and Athens appears in Georgia and Greece. So, perhaps all the world is Wood's stage after all. "At the moment I don't know quite where it's going to be set, but I think you're going to find that the scenes themselves will suggest what it will look like," he says. "I don't want to impose a time period on it because it's a journey.. .1 think it's just going to be a timeless journey and nobody is going to question the time period." With the Royal Bank Festival of Classics in its sixth year, no one questions the calibre of the cast or crew either. Wood is the second director to return to the Coronation Park stage for a sec ond year, and many actors come back year after year. Wood, who says there are few opportunities to perform Shakespeare in Ontario, was delight ed that he received over 600 resumes from actors requesting auditions for this year's production. Jonathan Eliot, who plays Pericles, is not only new to the festival stage but is also new to the acting profession, says Wood. "A very interest ing, new, young actor," he says. "And Chick Reid, who has been at Stratford a lot, is in the company and is my assistant." He is also delighted that theatre critics will ingly arrive on opening night to review the play. Whereas, the first production that he directed was all but ignored by the media. "It is very well respected. People view it quite favourably. The budget has gone up, and there's a lot of support," he explains. Pericles will open on July 18 and will contin ue Mondays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. in Coronation Park until August 11. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at the Oakville Centre box office, 130 Navy St., 815-2021. 6J M > % u n MJune 30,2001. C myour t 2400 South Service Road (9 0 S ) 845-3577 www.buddsbmw.com Budds' BMW * ELECTRIC W ATER HEATER Rent from The largest ever! over $1 m illio n m prizes! TICKETS STILL ONLY $40 O R 3 FO R $100 rth Annual OntarioHydroCfc energy only. 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