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Fiasco’s Smooth-Sailing Pericles
An affable, legible take that intermittently sings.
Fiasco is a wonderfully musical ensemble — its members’ braided, rising harmonies at the play’s beginning suggest a ritual incantation, and every so often, characters get brief solos or duets that don’t feel too far removed from the sincere hero ballads of Disney’s golden era. The company doesn’t lean far into the story’s most disturbing bits: The play begins with young Pericles (Paco Tolson) hightailing it out of the court of a king (Noah Brody) who’s committing incest with his own daughter and who likes to display the heads of her suitors on spikes, but it’s all G-rated. He starts out with irresistible, guffawing Ghostbof Christmas Present benevolence, then pulls Scrooge’s classic “And therefore I’m about to raise your salary!” trick on his daughter, the princess Thaisa (Jessie Austrian), and the befuddled Pericles (at this point Tatiana Wechsler), whose union he pretends not to favor just for a gas.
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