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Pericles Reviews

Joe Popp's music for "Pericles" is much better than show's silly plot
By Marty Clear, St. Petersburg Times
August 15, 2009

Don't think of Jobsite Theater's Pericles as a rock version of Shakespeare. Except for the skeletal remains of one of his least-known plays, there's virtually nothing of the bard in evidence.

The bare bones of the silly story are fleshed out with a barrage of great new songs by Tampa's former pop-punk king Joe Popp, great performances by a large cast and a fairly clever script by Neil Gobioff and Shawn Paonessa.

The result is an occasionally unwieldy but mostly incredibly enjoyable hybrid of theater and concert.

Gobioff and Paonessa, the team that created the wonderful March of the Kitefliers, transplant Pericles from ancient Greece to modern New York. They obviously had a lot of fun making the transition, turning noblemen into mafiosi and trading Tarsus for Coney Island. And despite some rather harsh plot points (incest, murder, forced prostitution) they pretty successfully turn the story into comedy.

Popp stands behind the action, in an elevated cage, with his guitar, sometimes playing John Gower, the 14th century poet whose work Shakespeare used as the basis for the play (and whom he incorporated into the play as a narrator). Popp also plays and sings along with cast members as a combination orchestra and chorus member.

Popp's songs have never been better, with great hooks and melodies tempered with punkish rawness. The cast features performers known mostly for their acting, but several of them (notably Ami Sallee Corley and Jason Vaughan Evans) reveal some really impressive pipes. There's really not a bad singer (or actor) in the eight-person cast.

The plot, however, is ridiculous, revolving around a mid-level mobster who figures out that one of the bosses is having sex with his own daughter. Worried about reprisal, he flees to Coney Island, then flees again by ship, wrecks and washes ashore on Cape Cod, where he meets a woman who bears his child but dies in childbirth, but then he gets amnesia and forgets he has a daughter until he almost has sex with her 18 years later.

Again, pretty silly — the kind of plot that we can excuse in Shakespeare because of the beauty of the language. Gobioff and Paonessa made a good choice in playing it mostly for laughs.

Weaknesses? A few. The playwrights' painfully obvious idea of turning the Prince of Tyre into the Prince of Tires is way beneath their talents. The play's also a good 20 minutes too long. And though the combination of theater and concert vibe works well, some more movement during the songs would have been nice. Mostly, the actors just grab microphones and sing. In the audience, you'd like to get up and dance, but since you can't, you'd like to at least watch the people on stage do it.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment, though, is that you can't buy a CD of these songs. They're almost all immediately engaging and you'd like to be able to hold onto them, but each new great song drives the memory of the previous one from your memory.

Theater Review by Sally Bosco: Jobsite’s Pericles
By Sally Bosco, Arts Net, Tampa Bay
August 13, 2009

Be ready to get blown away by Jobsite’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Pericles. I was completely in awe of Joe Popp’s punk version of Macbeth in 1997 for American Stage’s Shakespeare in the Park series, and this production didn’t fail to delight me just as much. It’s fun, quirky, and energetic.

The original Pericles has plot that is convoluted, at best, and Neil Gobioff and Shawn Panessa do a fine job in loosely using the Bard’s framework in this Soprano-esque tale of incest, murder and surrealism.

The plot is this: Perry angers local mob leader Fat Tony, by guessing his secret, that he is having an incestuous relationship with his daughter. After threats from Fat Tony, Perry runs off to Coney Island to make his fortune. When Perry learns that Fat Tony has sent hit man Nico to kill him, Perry escapes by boat. The boat is lost at sea and Perry washes up on Cape Cod to the ravishing visage of Talia, daughter of a local blueblood. Perry instantly falls in love with Talia, but her father doesn’t want her consorting with the low-born Perry. Perry wins a boat in her father’s golf tournament and they use the boat to escape. There’s a maritime accident in which Talia dies. Their daughter lives, but he leaves her with friends in Coney Island. The story goes on with some deliciously bizarre turns.

The second half of the show really gears up with some of the most rocking songs in the production. There’s an awesome finale, “We’re still here,” during which photos from Jobsite’s past shows are flashed in the background to celebrate their ten-year anniversary.

Stephen Ray nails the part of Perry, the reluctant mob guy, and Ami Sallee Corley plays Talia with conviction and passion. Chris Perez, who plays Fat Tony, is particularly funny when he plays Talia’s country club dad. Surprise standout is Amy E. Gray, who plays several parts, including Talia’s friend and a nun. She belts out a number during Perry’s surrealistic dream sequence in a monastery that has the audience rocking. Also, Katie Castonguay shows enthusiasm, energy, personality and freshness in her role as the tough-as-nails call girl with business sense.

The music by Joe Popp, Brian McCabe, Taylor Durand is the highlight of the show. Joe Popp functions as narrator, sings and plays killer guitar in a raised cage-like area in the back right part of the stage. Though he is playing over a recording of drums and bass, you’d never really know it, because it all sounds great, and the music is really bad-ass. He has a commanding stage presence and I found myself watching him as much as the actors.

Director, David Jenkins, pulls this diverse cast together wonderfully. Set and Lighting Director Brian Smallheer is to be commended for his inventive use of video on a small screen at the back of the stage to portray background activity. It showed settings and events they couldn’t have possibly reenacted on stage, like crushed cars, and some retro Coney Island footage that was a real hoot.

Pericles is a rare commodity, an original rock musical, put together by the raw energy and talent of a group of committed artists at a local theater. They went out on a limb to produce this edgy, possibly controversial show. It works, and there’s nothing canned or fake about it. Turn off the television and go see Pericles.

Pericles' rock musical makes Bard's tale sing
By Kathy L. Greenberg, Tampa Bay Tribune
August 12, 2009

Pericles: The New Rock Musical" is a raucous force of nature, so naturally Jobsite Theater produced it.

Fresh from the minds of musician/writer Joe Popp and Jobsite fellows Neil Gobioff and Shawn Paonessa, this is a butt-kicking, rocked-out adaptation of the Shakespearean play "Pericles, Prince of Tyre."

It makes no difference whether you've read the original (one of the few dogs in the Bard's repertoire) or limited yourself to "Hamlet." This version, directed by David M. Jenkins, is strong enough to stand alone.

In the subterranean world of the modern mafia — today's representatives being far less glamorous than those of the '20s and '30s — Perry (Stephen Ray) answers a dangerous riddle posed by the tracksuit-clad Fat Tony (Chris Perez). The prize for the riddle-solver is Tony's daughter (Katie Castonguay), while the loser gets whacked. But the whole game is a ruse, because Tony has no intention of giving the girl away; he wants her for himself. And when Perry understands that solving the riddle reveals the incestuous relationship — something even Fat Tony knows to keep quiet — he has to run for the hills to escape the Boss' hit men.

The hills turn out to be Coney Island, where Perry finds himself crowned king. He runs again, only to find himself shipwrecked on Cape Cod, where Talia (Ami Sallee Corley) rescues him. She's part of a Kennedy-esque family that is just as corrupt as Fat Tony's, albeit better dressed. Even the charity golf tournament, featuring a teetotaling priest (Jason Vaughan Evans), is tainted.

The epic journey theme really kicks in when Talia and Perry fall in love. They make a baby (Castonguay doubles as the grownup Marina), get married, lose each other in another boating disaster, find each other again at an abbey in Montauk, N.Y. (where Spencer Meyers bops hilariously), and live happily ever after.

It's the classic love story, with a twist.

Popp's loud but (thankfully) not ear-splitting guitar and lyrics punctuate the characters' emotions. The actors step out of their usual world of theater and into a rock concert to show how their characters feel. With microphones in hand, they belt out a range of music genres, from rock to country to love ballads. Then they slip back into theater mode the minute the mikes hit the stands.

It's clear that Jobsite has worked to create a non-musical musical. Rather than blending dialogue with song as though there were no distinction between the two, here there's a definite break, making the flow a bit disjointed. Nevertheless, the music is what makes this play so entertaining. Sure, the storyline is good. The acting is good (Corley and Amy E. Gray as Dion, et al, are especially deft). The text, while straight out of an episode of "The Sopranos," is delightfully smartass and rude. But the music is what makes this production really sing.

Theater review: Jobsite’s Pericles rocks the Bay
By Mark E. Leib, Creative Loafing
August 8, 2009

Pericles is a fitting cap to Jobsite Theater’s tenth season, a noisy, funny, unpredictable rock musical featuring the impressive guitar work of Joe Popp and the splendid performances of seven inspired actors.

Neil Gobioff and Shawn Paonessa’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play makes more sense than Shakespeare does; by turning the Bard’s characters into Mafia thugs, and his locations (Tyre, Tarsus, Pentapolis) into recognizable American locales (Coney Island, the Bronx, Cape Cod), Gobioff and Paonessa have succeeded in domesticating one of the wildest, hardest-to-follow plays in the canon, while still showing remarkable fidelity to the original.

This adaptation and Popp’s music — which is muscular and jarring, melodic at times and then bracingly dissonant — deserve a larger venue than the Shimberg Playhouse at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. In fact, watching the show, I kept thinking about the Shakespeare in the Park series that American Stage used to offer, and of Demens Landing, where hundreds of spectators with blankets and cushions used to assemble every spring. Pericles is every bit as good as The Bomb-itty of Errors or any other of the Park Shakespeares (a lot better than some), and it makes me wonder if Jobsite might become a source for annual Stratfordian pleasures now that American Stage prefers modern musicals.

In any case, if you love the Bard, good rock music, The Sopranos or just edgy theater, Pericles is a must-see. It’s an eloquent reminder of how indispensable Jobsite has become in ten years, and how consistently daring.

In Gobioff and Paonessa’s adaptation, it’s mob figure Perry (and not Prince Pericles of Tyre) who discovers that boss Fat Tony (and not King Antiochus) is having an incestuous relationship with his daughter Gina. When Fat Tony realizes that he’s been exposed, he sends killer Nico to murder Perry, and Perry runs off to various points in Brooklyn. At Coney Island he meets the very funny and vulgar couple Cleo and Dion (Cleon and Dionyza of Tarsus in the original) and then proceeds up the East Coast in a boat. Washing ashore on Cape Cod, he falls in love with Talia, daughter of a country club plutocrat (King Simonides) who doesn’t want his daughter carousing with a low-class greaser. But Perry wins a crucial golf tournament, takes to sea again with his now-wife Talia, and she gives him a daughter — but dies (apparently) in childbirth. Back at Coney Island, Perry entrusts Cleo and Dion with baby Marina — but Dion’s not to be trusted. There are several more twists and turns — all with analogies in Shakespeare’s original — and then a Hollywood ending at a convent (the temple of Diana) featuring a raucous eunuch, a mother superior and everyone Perry could hope to rediscover. All’s well that ends well.

And all’s well with the personnel that Jobsite has chosen for this delightful romp. First, there’s composer/lyricist Popp, who spends the whole play in a raised cage at the back, playing thrilling live guitar over recorded (and driving) bass and drums. Then there’s lead actor Stephen Ray, whose Perry is a dim but searching Mafia bad guy, out only to save his own life at first, but eventually conscious that wife and daughter are also worthy. As Marina, Perry’s grown daughter, Jobsite newcomer Katie Castonguay is just the golden-hearted whore to convince a john that he’d rather be with his therapist, and also in his first Jobsite show, Christopher Perez is wonderful as Fat Tony, Cleo and Talia’s father Simon.

As Cleo’s wife Dion, Amy E. Gray is one of the crudest, most uncultured hotties in New Yawk, and Ami Sallee Corley is a passionate, if rather unglamorous, Talia. Spencer Meyers shines in several parts, especially as the aforementioned happy eunuch, and Jobsite workhorse Jason Vaughan Evans is a cheerfully reptilian Lizard as well as a priest whose golf prowess turns out to be personally dangerous. There’s not much to say about Brian Smallheer’s mostly empty set, but Katrina Stevenson’s costumes, from Perry’s suits to Cleo’s shorts, are nicely emblematic. David M. Jenkins, Jobsite’s head, directs with formidable skill.

So happy tenth anniversary to Jobsite Theater, and congratulations on continuing to grow with each production. Pericles is outstanding: it’s good music, good theater and remarkably faithful Shakespeare. It’s the sort of theater one expects to find only in a major metropolis.

Tamps’s fortunate to be its host.

Pericles, Shimberg Playhouse at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa, 813-229-STAR. Runs through August 23, 8 p.m Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. $24.50. Rating: Four stars.

Pericles Previews

ArtBeat: Pericles
By Alexis Quinn Chamberlain, Reax
August 8, 2009

With a season consisting of plays telling of everything from the murder of an Irish National Liberation Army enforcer’s beloved cat to a trial for the Devil (which the audience attended as would-be jurors), Jobsite Theater, the resident theater company at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, has chosen yet another eclectic, over-the-top story to conclude their tenth season.

Putting an old spin on a classic Shakespearean tale, Jobsite’s Pericles adapts the forgotten script for Pericles, Prince of Tyre, transforming ancient Greek figures and Shakespearean verse into a rock-based musical about a high-ranking New York Mafia family.

“It's like a rock concert, a musical and a mob story all wrapped up into one,” says Neil Gobioff, one half of the duo earning Pericles playwright credits.

But despite incorporating typical music and dialogue, don’t expect Pericles to be like anything you’ve ever seen before; the Jobsite crew pride themselves on turning a stale, irrelevant play into something almost everyone can appreciate.

“Don't think of cheesy show tunes - think of it as if The Sopranos made a musical with a soundtrack by a fusion of The Minutemen and The Replacements,” says David Jenkins, Jobsite's artistic director and director of Pericles. “For anyone who hates what passes for a rock musical, this is for you; if you love great music or acting, if you love the mob genre, if you love a good story or a good laugh, and even if you love Shakespeare - this is a must see.”

Set in contemporary America, Pericles follows the journey of Perry, “Prince of Tires,” and his epic, coming-of-age journey from “prince” to “king” within the mob family.

After getting tangled in a web of Mafia incest and lies, Perry uncovers a potentially lethal secret and flees Brooklyn and his mob ties, ultimately ending up in Cape Cod. Throughout his fugitive journey, Perry evades mob hits, discovers how to deal with loss and encounters a plethora of life-changing characters - including the love of his life - and ultimately learns the true value of honor, love and loyalty.

“At the core, this is a story of great love and loss,” Jenkins says. “It’s about balancing business and family and what love, honor and respect really mean. It’s an epic play that covers 18 years and all of these powerful, fascinating characters.”

Although the major plot and structure of Shakespeare’s original play remains securely intact, Jobsite’s adaptation of Pericles strays away from the original as much as possible, making the play modern and relevant to today’s audience.

“I’ve really never seen anything like this,” says former Tampa resident Joe Popp, who originally cooked up the idea and acts as part composer, part lyricist and part drummer. “Most adaptations keep the original language, but this production uses original dialogue that could be straight out of The Sopranos, Goodfellas, or The Godfather.”

But remodeling conventional verse and adding a kick-ass punk-rock soundtrack aren’t the only elements of the original play Jobsite revamped for their stage.

“If Shakespeare's name wasn't attached to it, I think it would be a forgotten script,” says Shawn Paonessa, who also earns a playwright credit. “The original has several random and detached plotlines, some of which just stop happening or start in the middle of the play. Characters are introduced and never appear again. We tightened a lot of that up.”

But regardless of the vast changes to the play, the original text from a riddle given to Pericles, Prince of Tyre, in Act I of Shakespeare's original piece is, surprisingly, incorporated into this fresh adaptation.

“‘Viper’ is straight out of the text. The chorus is almost word for word from the original play - it's one of the few passages that remain,” says Popp. “It's interesting because the writing is so good. This is my second Shakespeare adaptation, and his writing really lends itself to the rock format.”

Keeping with the modernization of traditional theater, Pericles adds elements rarely seen onstage - for instance, the incorporation of video to accentuate a specific setting or two.

“This will really help to show things we can't put onstage, like the grandeur and craziness of Coney Island, or the power of a storm at sea,” says Jenkins. “We're also using it to accentuate the music and the overall presentation.”

But including lesser-used theatre tactics isn’t the only thing adapting an original, never-performed play from someone as influential as Shakespeare has allowed Jobsite to take advantage of.

“As a world premiere, everything is open to interpretation with a clean slate,” says Jenkins. “The actors are creating characters for the first time, which is giving the creators ideas for things to add to the script. Even with my direction there's an amount of collaboration involved. It's really exciting working on a new show where there are no preconceived notions. I don't feel like I'm directing Shakespeare at all.”

When it comes to the originality of the play, the crew seems to agree: the mob theme and soundtrack are what make Pericles completely atypical and innovative. When it comes to the show’s highlights, however, there seems to be a lot to look forward to.

“The highlights will be the acting and the music,” says Gobioff. “I'm always amazed at how the ensemble can take the words we write and give them so much life - an energy beyond what's on the page.”

“This is something where the audience will be wondering what the next scene and the next song is going to be - it's all such a great series of events,” Paonessa adds. “This won’t be your grandma’s musical.”

Pericles plays until August 23 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Shimberg Playhouse, Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. Regularly priced tickets start at 24.50 and can be purchased at tbpac.org.

Theater interview: Joe Popp works his magic in Jobsite’s Pericles
By Sally Bosco, Creative Loafing
August 6, 2009

I interviewed Joe Popp the weekend before opening night of Pericles in a dark, smoky bar in downtown Tampa. He was affable and talkative — I guess I expected more of a pissed-off punk guy. I mentioned that I had seen his punk rock Macbeth at American Stage’s Shakespeare in the Park series in 1997. It was a kick-ass production that still stands as one of the theater’s best-attended events ever. For that reason, I can’t wait to see Pericles at Jobsite Theater. Joe wrote the music and lyrics for Pericles and also plays guitar and functions as the narrator.

See what Popp had to say about how he turned Shakespeare’s least-produced work into a modern, pop-punk-riddled tale of incest, intrigue and murder in the streets of New Jersey, where Pericles becomes Perry the mobster.

CL: What attracted you to doing Pericles?

JP: You had mentioned Macbeth. The original director for Macbeth was going to be Paul Mullins, who had done a lot of work with the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. And Lisa Powers was at that time the artistic director for American Stage. She said, “You must be nuts. You can’t do Pericles. There’s all this incest. No. Forget it. Do Macbeth.” Paul had to go off the show because he was offered a production with Steppenwolf so Lisa took over as director. It was his idea to incorporate some of my band’s existing songs into Macbeth, but he planted the seed for doing Pericles back then. I thought I’d read it and see what it was about. I read it and it’s the story of an epic journey. It’s Shakespeare’s least produced work, and they don’t even know if it’s his. There’s all this weird underlying history of the play, so I thought that was kind of cool, too. We did an adaptation that follows the story line, but it’s entirely rewritten into modern language. There are only a couple of stanzas from the original play that are lyrics to a song. Everything else is out the window.

CL: It has a mafia theme, correct?

JP: Yes, it has a Sopranos tone to it. I originally had the concept and I presented it to David Jenkins (Director for Pericles and Artistic Director for Jobsite Theater) and he said, “We’ll vote on producing it but you can’t just say you want to produce a show. We need music, and we need a book.” So I wrote this 30-page book and about nine songs and they voted on it and they got it in. We got Neil Gobioff and Shawn Paonessa (perennial Jobsite contributors) to do the book.

We didn’t really communicate as much as you’d think. They said, “You do lyrics and we’ll do the book.” We did everything through FTP. Same with all the actors and music. I work at a college recording studio, so I have really great facilities.

I’ve lived in New York for nine years. I’m the technical director for the recording department at City College of New York. Now I’m on sabbatical. I get a cool year off with pay. So I took three months of vacation and twelve months of sabbatical. I’m going to go back to New York and travel, do some other stuff.

CL: What kind of challenges did Pericles present to you?

JP: The challenge was adapting it into a sensible story, which I kind of put off on Shawn and Neil. It’s so insanely epic. It covers a huge amount of time. He washes up on shore. His wife is sealed up in a coffin. Originally with mine, there was no way you could produce it. I had a car crusher in the beginning. I had them in the subway. She ended up in a barrel. I had all these crazy production ideas. That’s usually where I start. I think about what I want for production elements and I write the story around that. It’s no way to write a play, and I don’t claim to be a playwright, even though I’ve written three. The challenges are just trying to make the play poignant and sensible, give it meaning that is relevant to today, also personal meaning. It’s almost like writing a song. It means something to you and people interpret it in different ways.

It’s definitely a fun show, and the cast, crew and everybody involved is amazing. That’s why I love working with Jobsite. I got an opportunity to work with Michael Greif, the director of RENT a couple of years ago, and we did this adaptation of The Boy in the Bubble, and it had this huge production value, there were 25 people in the cast, but it chopped me off creatively, whereas David says, “I want to make sure you’re happy doing your thing.” And that’s why I’m back here working with Jobsite. I saw their second show, Brown Bread, and I thought, these guys are on to something.

To me, I think their shows should sell out immediately as soon as they announce them. That was my struggle when I left here. I felt as thought I had to go somewhere to get fed. We did a show with them that I wrote in New York. It was called Maxwell, and it sold out in two days through word of mouth. We didn’t put an ad in the paper. That’s the advantage of New York. The disadvantage is paying my $1,500 a month rent for a shoebox with a toilet in it.

CL: Can you talk about some of your musical influences?

JP: Well, I like what I like. I don’t like reggae but I like Bob Marley. I don’t like country but I like Johnny Cash. My early stuff was like The Who, Cheap Trick, Zeppelin, The Beatles, the standard classic rock stuff. Minute Men would be my power trio influence. They were one of the most influential bands in my life. But I also got into the pop-punk thing. My band actually opened for Green Day, the whole Fat Wreck Chords stuff. That’s really what my bands end up sounding like, and there are a lot of those elements in the show, too. The punk guys never thought I was punk enough, and the pop guys thought I was too punk, and we can never really find our place in the world.

CL: Do you have a band now? Are you working on any other projects?

Yes, I have a band called The Hornrims. I’m purposely not working on any other projects right now. I just want to take my sabbatical and go drive my motorcycle around and just kind of not do music for a while. As I get older, it’s harder to lug your stuff around, your guitar, your amps, your pedal board, especially in New York. You don’t have a car, so you’re traveling by train or foot. Taxis are expensive. It was originally going to be the full band in Pericles, then my bass player’s wife got pregnant. She had her baby the day we started rehearsal here.

For the show we have bass and drums on a CD, and then I play live guitar over the top of that. There’s no piano, no synthesizer. It’s all just bass, drums and guitar, purposely for that minimalist feel. Every show I’ve written, they do my stuff on piano and it sounds too theater-y. The piano is C based where as the guitar is E based, which is more like rock. I don’t like the synthetic instrument sound that you get with synthesizer. My bands have been all bass, guitar and drums.

The show is really fun, and I love what Jobsite is doing. They’re edgy, they’re all tattooed freaks, they’re just crazy people, and that’s why I like working with them.

We say, go see Pericles and prepare to be blown away.

Pericles: A New Rock Musical' comes to TBPAC
By Marty Clear, St. Petersburg Times
August 6, 2009

Even if you've seen a lot of Shakespeare, you've probably never seen Pericles. It would certainly not be included in a collection of the Bard's greatest hits.

So you may not be inclined to rush out and get tickets for the upcoming Jobsite Theater "modernization" of the obscure Shakespeare nonclassic.

In fact, even Shawn Paonessa, who wrote the script with Neil Gobioff, says he didn't much like the original at first either.

But, he said, you won't need to know the source material, or even have a particular interest in Shakespeare, to appreciate this new show.

"I don't even like to use the term 'modernization,' " Paonessa said. "It's more like an adaptation."

(Paonessa and Gobioff also wrote The March of the Kitefliers, a wonderful straight play that Jobsite produced twice.)

The show keeps the violence and incest that make the original so arresting, but infuses them with modern language and humor.

There's also lots of new music written and performed by Joe Popp, a former luminary of Tampa's pop-punk scene. He's now based in New York and creates a lot of edgy, original musical theater. He has done several projects with Jobsite, and is perhaps best known to local theatergoers for his punk treatment of Macbeth for American Stage's Shakespeare in the Park in 1997.

Pericles: A New Rock Musical runs through Aug. 23 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Shimberg Playhouse. 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday. $24.50 plus service charge. (813) 229-7827 or tbpac.org.

Theater review: With musical makeover, Shakespeare rocks
By Kathy L. Greenberg, Tampa Bay Tribune
August 4, 2009

Imagine taking one of Shakespeare's worst plays, replacing his characters with modern-day Mafiosi and back dropping the whole affair with punk rock music. The result is "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," a violent story about incest and murder, morphing into "Pericles: A New Rock Musical."

Only the adventurous crew at Jobsite Theater could make this combination work.

"Pericles" — the new version — is Joe Popp's baby. The New York-based musician, filmmaker, actor and writer conceived the idea about 10 years ago, thinking the play would translate well into a rock musical. But it wasn't an easy project to produce.

"When I did 'Macbeth' with American Stage [Theatre Company] in '97," said Popp, "'Pericles' was brought up as an idea for Shakespeare in the Park. But nobody was going to touch a play with an incestuous theme for family entertainment."

Fast forward a decade, when Popp pitched his plan to the folks at Jobsite. A former Tampa resident, he had worked with them in the past — beginning with the 15-minute rock opera for "Y2K: Yearn to Know" — so another collaboration made sense. Once again, Jobsite liked his ideas, though not without some initial reservations.

"It sounded a little funky," admitted Shawn Paonessa, Jobsite vice chair and performer. "Neil [Gobioff] and I read a couple of synopses of the original play and then Joe's treatment. Joe's ideas applied, and put together made a really unique version that made sense and made it a lot of fun."

With Paonessa and Gobioff cobbling away at the text and Popp composing the eclectic music mix (think sounds of country, sea shanties, ballads, pop), "Pericles" evolved into a play-cum-rock concert that flies in the face of conventional musicals.

The original play — which scholars argue George Wilkins, a hack playwright, wrote and Shakespeare only contributed to — is an epic journey about a prince evolving into a king. Paonessa and Gobioff started with this basic structure and then massaged the material into a more cogent storyline.

"There are a couple of incidents where 'Pericles' has weird tangents and plot lines that disappear. It's not one of Shakespeare's stronger plays for a reason, because characters cease to exist. We tightened some things, which came from making it relevant. For someone who has never read the [original] play, they won't know what's missing," Paonessa said.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre is now Perry, Prince of Tires and a junior-ranked mobster in New York. King Antiochus emerges as a senator from Massachusetts. The daughter, a Mediterranean-princess-turned-Eastern-Seaboard-rich-girl, is molested by a father who can't stand the idea of another man touching her. Pericles journeys from Antioch to Tyre to Pentapolis to Tarsus, while Perry moves from Brooklyn to Coney Island to Cape Cod and back to Brooklyn. The title characters are subject to one trial after another. Death barks at the heels of both.

"Pericles: A New Rock Musical" is neither a true adaptation nor pure invention. But it is new. It's different. And it's sure to be a really cool production.

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