Pericles

EN One of William Shakespeare’s most vast and epic plays may also be one of his most prescient. Sami Ibrahim drags Pericles and his journey into the modern world as it maps across the refugee routes for our time: Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Libya, Greece. A father and daughter torn apart; a perilous journey and the cost of survival.

Playwright Sami Ibrahim, whose sharply political work has attracted attention across British theatre, from the Royal Court to Shakespeare’s Globe, sets Shakespeare’s verse in collision with contemporary speech, creating a deliberate friction between the language of an ancient story and the words – or absence of words – available to those living it now. What survives displacement? What happens to love when two people no longer share a tongue? The international ensemble makes those questions live in the room rather than merely on the page.

Directing is Richard Twyman of English Touring Theatre, previously seen at the Théâtres de la Ville with Macbeth (2023) and the creation of Stolen Ground (2024). With this Pericles, Twyman continues a sustained conversation about what classic texts can hold when pressed against urgent contemporary reality.