[In the following review, Macaulay maintains that Adrian Noble's Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of Pericles was flawed, citing Noble's uninspired vision, Ray Fearon's Pericles, and the musical accompaniment.]

Behind all the Royal Shakespeare's muddles, there lies the single mystery of Adrian Noble himself. Even if you accept that both the RSC's London and Stratford sites needed changing, why did Noble decide to by uprooting the company in both London and Stratford at the same time? And why did he commit the company to such major upheaval but then depart when the work had only just begun?

To me, the answer to these widely asked questions is linked to another question, which has been seldom asked: why has Noble, one of the world's leading Shakespeare directors of the past 20 years, directed Shakespeare so seldom in the past four years? My guess is that he has the disease that no RSC artist likes to admit to: he feels Shakespeared-out.

When Peter Hall left the National Theatre in 1988, his farewell gesture was to direct three of Shakespeare's last plays: The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest, it was the gesture of an artist, and characteristic of a committed Shakespearian. I wish I could report that Noble was leaving in similar style.

Sure, the RSC is indeed presenting three late romances in its Roundhouse season—The Winter's Tale and The Tempest again, and the rarely seen Pericles—but Noble is staging only one of them, Pericles. It's a problem play and it is widely assumed that much of it is not by Shakespeare at all and Noble didn't intend it as his farewell anyway.

Staging Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Noble works like a man in love. Staging Pericles, he works like a defence lawyer putting up a smokescreen around his clients' admitted shortcomings. It's a picturesque, melodious piece of lively ensemble that for too long feels like so much blah.

Pericles is one of the two Shakespeare plays in which you quite easily feel that parts of the play are non-Shakespearian while you're listening to them. The other is Henry VIII; but, of the two, Pericles is the more cumbersome just because its storyline is more epic.

For a long time, in the way it shows people wandering around the world, through romantic love and shipwrecks and disillusion, it feels like Ibsen's Peer Gynt or Bernstein's Candide: but far, far more blurry. Suddenly, though, it locks into focus; and you think: yes, this is Shakespeare.

Strewn with carpets, incense, and exotic instrumentation, this Pericles makes every effort to establish its general eastern Mediterranean setting. Especially in its first three acts, and occasionally even in the more recognisably Shakespearian passages, I was distracted by the heavy amplification of the actors' voices, and by the sonorous but almost non-stop musical accompaniment by Shaun Davey and his 10 live musicians.

As Pericles, the handsome, intense Ray Fearon uses his voice with considerable musical eloquence—but that voice is so hoarse, so nearly inexpressive an instrument, that we're more aware of strain than communication. The sheer delicacy and innocence of Kananu Kirmi as his daughter Marina makes more impression. But they both need all their amplification.

Olwen May as the Bawd is the most incisive, not just in delivery but in grasp of all the witty antitheses that underpin Shakespeare's writing. Eventually, the ensemble really brings off the play; but chiefly in sentimental happy-ending theatricality, seldom in the riveting word-by-word progress that makes Shakespearean drama Shakespearian.