ON THEATER: Bard on the beach a bargain

Shakespeare’s plays have been restructured in the areas of time and place for the past 400 or so years, but the upcoming presentation in Laguna Beach may just be a first.

“Pericles Redux,” in town for a single performance Oct. 26, will be presented not only in Laguna Beach, but also on the beach — Main Beach on Pacific Coast Highway between Forest and Ocean avenues, that is.

And, did we mention admission to the 4 p.m. performance is free?

It’s yet another project of Gallimaufry Performing Arts, which participated in last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival and encountered the Not Man Apart Physical Theater Ensemble there. That group’s Shakespeare with a twist won the “Best of the Best” award in a competition involving more than 2,000 different shows.

“Pericles Redux” is a radical adaptation of Shakespeare’s adventure play “Pericles, Prince of Tyre.” According to Gallimaufry director Steve Josephson, “it pushes the boundaries between theater and dance.”

Physical comedy is a definite strength of Not Man Apart, which is based on the Monterey Peninsula in Northern California,” Josephson points out. “The seven strong cast takes us on a journey that’s hard to forget as audiences find themselves laughing and crying at the same time.

“The production has its roots in Shakespeare’s “Pericles,” in which a prince is forced to flee his homeland by an incestuous king. Traveling from city to city, he finds new friends and, eventually, a wife and child, until tragedy strikes, leaving him bereft of both — or so he thinks.

According to one critic at the Fringe Festival, “Moments of athletic dance pepper the action without a hint of incongruity, with lifts and jumps serving only to drive the show along. What captures us most, however, is the extremity of emotion.”

“Pericles Redux” is part of Gallimaufry Performing Arts’ 2008 Gallimaufry Arts Festival, beginning Thursday and running through Nov. 2. The festival also includes Conflict Relief’s “The Arab, the Jew and the Chicken” (Thursday to Nov. 1), “Songs in the Sand” (Oct. 25) and the Laguna Beach New Play Festival (Nov. 1-2). For more information, call Gallimaufry at (949) 499-5060 or visit www.gallimaufry.info.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.