Giles Davies and Billy Chace Photo by Mikki Schaffner

Rather than give Pericles a traditional staging as the hero undertakes perilous sea journeys and suffers shipwrecks across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, director Brian Isaac Phillips's production has launched the entire tale into outer space. On a futuristic set (designed by Andrew Hungerford, enhanced by projections designed by Robert Carlton Stimmel and jangling, woo-woo sounds by Zack Bennett), the relocation is further advanced by composer Cory Davenport's musical score, performed by him and other cast members on electric guitars, keyboards, and percussion.

Pericles is in fact based on a story told by poet John Gower, a 14th-century contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. Davenport, with face and body tattoos, portrays Gower as the play's narrator from opening to closing with stops along the way at various destinations to fill in narrative connections. He speak-sings the text from the script (projected on theater walls) in rhythmic, four-beat lines, accompanied by his droning guitar.

The tale of Prince Pericles's journeys, full of fantastic twists and turns, is chaotic and populated with an array of bizarre characters, the inhabitants of a half-dozen planets that he visits (adapted from the cities in the play's script.) We first meet Pericles (Giles Davies) seeking to solve a riddle and marry the daughter of the villainous King Antiochus (Barry Mulholland). When he realizes that the king wants no one to survive solving the riddle, Pericles departs for points unknown.

After a storm, he is rescued by weird alien fishermen on Tarsus. He learns that King Simonides (Kelly Mengelkoch) is holding a tournament to honor his daughter Thaisa (Aiden Sims); Pericles wins a series of clownish competitions and marries Thaisa. Intending to return home, Pericles and the pregnant Thaisa experience another storm. She dies in childbirth and her body is sent into space (only to be met later and resurrected). The infant Marina is left in the care of the corrupt Tarsus Governor Cleon (Billy Chace) and his wife Dionyza (Hayley Guthrie).

After 14 years, young Marina (Jasmine Bouldin) is about to become a victim of the envious Dionyza when she is abducted by pirates and eventually sold into a brothel in Mytilene. Saved by her virtuous behavior, she impresses the Governor Lysimachus (Sylvester Little Jr.). Seriously depressed, almost comatose Pericles arrives at Mytilene where a chance meeting with Lysimachus and Marina revives him when he recognizes her as his daughter. They travel to one further destination to give thanks to the Goddess Diana (Courtney Lucien), where he unexpectedly finds Thaisa, again alive.

If this all sounds a tad exhausting, well, it is. (The show's running time is nearly three hours.) Phillips's antic production (featuring wildly inventive sci-fi costumes by Rainy Edwards) has so many twists and turns, not to mention actors playing multiple roles, that it's a challenge to keep the story straight. There's little opportunity for any actor to develop a complex character. Davies, a longtime Cincy Shakes veteran, has some chance with the virtuous Pericles, especially in the play's later scenes as he's surprisingly reunited with his daughter and wife. Bouldin's portrait of Marina is the show's best piece of acting: Her sweet defense of her virginity and her bemusement at the crazy action swirling around her virtuous behavior make her an appealing character.

There are multiple opportunities for comic moments in Pericles. Chace and Guthrie, attired in bizarrely gothic black with long black wigs, weird headdresses, and costumes that distort their body shapes, play their sinister characters with relish. A trio of Boult (Jeremy Dubin), Pander (Mulholland), and especially the imperious but incompetent Bawd (Elizabeth Chinn Molloy) drive the energy for their scenes. The fishermen, munching on strange catches (Patrick Earl Phillips, Geoffrey Warren Barnes and others) and the gibbering pirates (several of the same actors) evoked laughter from the opening night audience.

The production uses a half-dozen dancers from the Q-Kids Dance Team for entertainments at the various interplanetary courts. Their onstage presence, especially in the total cast dance number that closes the show, does make for a happy ending.

I'm inclined to say that Cincy Shakes' sci-fi production of Pericles is worth seeing for anyone eager to add it to their completist list of the Shakespearean canon. But its chaotic storytelling, jumping between various odd planets and characters, with rather tuneless guitar accompaniment, will leave many theatregoers perplexed.

Pericles runs through May 3, 2026, at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 1195 Elm Street, Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, Cincinnati OH. For tickets and information, please visit cincyshakes.com or call 513-381-2273.