This production is the stuff of theater history: Don't miss it. That, essentially, is all that needs to be said about the miraculous new staging of "Pericles" by Yukio Ninagawa.
Last Thursday the director and Thelma Holt, the producer who introduced him to British audiences with the "Ninagawa Macbeth" of 1987, gave a pre-performance talk at the Sainokuni Saitama Arts Center, at which they explained how "Pericles" came to be the 12th Shakespeare play that Ninagawa has staged for the SSAC (he aims to stage the entire canon of 37 plays).
It was, they said, at the invitation of Trevor Nunn, the outgoing Artistic Director of the National Theatre in London. Nunn, who leaves his post March 31, wanted to see how Ninagawa would deal with this drama on which so many directors have come unstuck. Nunn himself apparently confessed to not feeling up to tackling "Pericles."