Pericles  Guthrie Theater - 2005  | Photos: Michal Daniel

Sass at Guthrie Lab packs ‘Pericles’ with high-jinks   - Talkin' Broadway

“The Guthrie Lab's playfully exuberant production of Pericles... bears the thumbprint of director Joel Sass's lavish, tongue-in-cheek style.... I was soon won over by this spirited production's often simple, but wonderful, theatricality.   In the closing acts, Sass steps back to let Shakespeare's poetry work its own magic....This is a true ensemble production, with eight actors playing some 40 parts - and it works.   Director Sass spent three years designing with Theatre de la Jeune Lune, and he infuses Pericles with brilliant touches of theatricality from the Jeune Lune tradition....”

‘Pericles’ Among the Years’ Ten Best Shows    - Pioneer Press

“Director Joel Sass has a reputation for creating spectaculars on a shoestring, so how would he fare helming his first show at the resource-rich Guthrie? Jam-packed with sensory treats and filled with daring performances, Pericles was the jauntiest Shakespeare at the Guthrie in years. [Sass] assembled a design team that provided a rich-looking set but still remembered plenty of cheap tricks from his flash-paper and billowing-fabric-as-waves days.  And he found an eight-member cast giddily willing to ride along on his raucously idiosyncratic journey through Shakespeare’s highly improbable and darkly humorous odyssey of love, time and space.”

City Pages SPOTLIGHT        - City Pages

“It almost seems like the product of a drunken bet: Take local indie visionary Joel Sass and give him a Guthrie budget to work with. But here's the catch: He has to take on Pericles, the shaggy dog/black sheep of the Shakespearean canon....  Sass flirts with disaster and, though disaster flirts back, he ends up with success instead...   A foray into the mythic and the archetypal subconscious.....!”