By William Shakespeare. Adapted and directed by Lois Anderson. A Bard on the Beach production. On the Howard Family Stage on Sunday, July 10. Continues in rep until September 18

William Shakespeare has acquired a new collaborator for this production of Pericles: director Lois Anderson has reinvented the script and the results are enchanting.

There’s a long-standing debate about how much of Pericles Shakespeare wrote: most modern scholars agree that Shakespeare probably penned about half of Pericles, Prince of Tyre and that a pamphleteer and pimp named George Wilkins probably wrote the other half.

Enter Anderson, who has completely overhauled the play for her Bard on the Beach interpretation, rearranging the delivery of information and cutting characters.

In Anderson’s version, Cerimon, an old magician, rescues a young woman named Marina from a brothel. As Cerimon tells Marina the story of King Pericles, he summons shades—ghostly performers who look like they’re covered in off-white dust—to enact it. In one magical development, Marina becomes a character in the story and is drawn into its telling, the vivid reds, greens, and golds of her clothing contrasting sharply with the ghostliness of the other figures. She’s in Technicolor and they are the palest sepia. She is a living creature trying to make meaning from the abstractions of an elusive narrative.

Throughout, Anderson uses a story-theatre approach, which is remarkably effective in conveying the events of this episodic tale—and startlingly beautiful. Using clay figures, pots, and other found objects, Cerimon and Marina play out the confrontation between Pericles and the incestuous King Antiochus. When Pericles and others engage in a jousting contest, a large cloth represents the field, Cerimon magically produces toy horses that gallop across it, and, when it’s Pericles’s turn to joust, the entire cloth transforms into a life-size horse—complete with swishing tail—and the king mounts it.

Moments like this made me weep in wonder. Other experiences, including my dawning recognition of Marina’s true relationship to Pericles, made me weep with empathy.

Kamyar Pazandeh, who is so freshly graduated from Studio 58 that he has barely had time to remove his cap and gown, makes a grounded, handsome, passionate Pericles. And Sereana Malani brings a charismatic warmth and unapologetic sensuality to Pericles’s wife, Thaisa. David Warburton hits just the right combination of humility and authority in the key role of the magician Cerimon. And Luisa Jojic’s frank intelligence and openheartedness are perfect for Marina. In one of the most surprising turns of the evening, Jeff Gladstone becomes the creepily wicked queen, Dionyza.

Anderson’s designers lavishly support the fairy-tale world she has created. Amir Ofek drapes his set with fabrics and studs it with terra-cotta figures. John Webber lights in rich golds, blues, and other hues. Malcolm Dow’s exotic music evokes all of the spices of the Mediterranean. And Carmen Alatorre’s costumes, which are often sumptuous, also masterfully manage the contrasting worlds of this telling.

This production would be stronger if it kept upping the theatrical ante—if there were more physical magic after the interval—and an early sequence in which the men dance is goofy.

But Anderson’s Pericles is a stunner.