From the Virginia Gazette, 7/23/88:

     "Imagine, if you can or dare, Wally Cleaver menaced by Frank Zappa and a
surly group of Bikers from Hell, and you have some vague idea of what "The
Adventures Musical of Pericles" is all about.  This latest VSF outing, based 
(or so it is claimed) on Shakespeare's "Pericles, Price of Tyre" must rank as
the most wretched, abysmal piece of dreck to slouch across area stages in 
recorded memory.  If "Pericles" were an animal, it would be declared rabid
and shot.  No doubt there are those who would champion this so-called production
as a daring piece of avant-garde theatre, but if they're smart, they would
leave the country before their neighbors spend any money on tickets.
    Things got so bad on opening night that, at intermission, audience
members (the ones who stayed for act II) were muttering and shaking their
heads over the onstage carnage.  In fact, the 10-minute intermission was
the high point of the three-hour-plus evening.  Amid the surpressed guffaws
as the play droned on (and this was during the ostensibly serious moments),
a question was asked: Who would be the first to bolt -- the actors or the 
audience?
   One cannot begin to imagine what went on in director Joe Cantu's mind as
he presided over this catastrophe.  Perhaps it was an emperor-with-no-clothes 
situation.  No one dared tell him how completely fractured, insane, incoherent,
amateurish, and downright embarassing his "Pericles" adaptation was.
   In warming to my subject, I regret to say I simply don't have the space to
gore the ox as thoroughly as I would like.
   Briefly: For those who love disconnected vignettes, motifs and episodes 
larded with a boring score, soured by off-key singing and mixed with a
generous allotment of choreography reminiscent of TV's "Hullabaloo," this
is the show to see.
   Pity the poor actors most of all.  They have The Look in their eyes, the 
Oh-My-God-How-Am-I-Going-To-Get-Through-This-Look.  Fortunately, all are
young, and in time will forget (or pretend to forget) their participation
in this crime.  They do the best they can, given the circumstances.  Some gobble
up the scenery, others shake their booty, still more simper, giggle and
prance.
   One fellow, clad in white shorts and snorkling gear, attempts three accents
in less than two minutes.  Yeah, this is living.  This is Theatre.
   The schlock pointer goes of the dial, though, when the lead character 
comes onstage.  Lives there a worse performance than that delivered by Brad
Dalto as Pericles?  Larry "Bud" Melman of Late Night with David Letterman
would have been a better choice.
   There is some imaginative amusement to be had.  Edward Morgan as the
Frank-Zappish Antiochus got a few chuckles, as did Charles Currier as 
blues-singer Cleon. (A more serious turn is taken by Don Lee, who does a 
fine job with Cerimon.)  The trouble is, every performance has but the flimsiest
of context to recommend it.  Some of the performances were so arch that the
actors could have built a French cathedral.  Cantu should probably have them
pretend to be French cathedrals; it would make just as much sense.
   Then there are the whips, chains, bimbettes, transvestites, and whores of 
Act II, Scene 666.  I have to hand it to Lisa Vollrath-- I may have taken
her to task for Ariel's costuming in "Tempest," but here she keeps the 
constume changes coming, and they all work, regardless of the pointlessness
of it all.
   If Cantu had decided to plunge entirely off the deep end, he could have made
what film reviewers Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert call A Guilty Pleasure, a
show that's so bad it's good.  Sort of like those UFO movies wherein the
flying saucer is a paper supported by a string, and you can see the string and
the cheesy backdrop.
   But "Pericles" doesn't even make the GP ranks.  It's just plain awful.
My condolences to the cast."
   -- James Schultz