Prince of asylum seekers

The image is impossible to forget. A highly distressed woman recounts the true story of a mother and son who flee Indonesia on a tiny boat with 421 people. The boat capsizes, and in the ensuing panic, three of the heavily pregnant women give birth.

Most of the passengers die, but as the mother waits for rescue - clinging for survival to a floating corpse - she sees the body of a woman and her baby, still attached by its umbilical cord, float by.

This extraordinary collaborative work has augmented the story of Pericles', Prince of Tyre's travels with accounts such as the one above of modern asylum seekers, and their trials in their search for safety. Pericles is notoriously problematic to stage. Although it was one of the first of the Bard's dramas to be revived following the 1660 Restoration, in subsequent centuries it was frequently savagely edited and this is certainly an intriguing attempt to give its episodic narrative a contemporary bite.

However, in a project set up by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Britain's only homeless people's professional theatre company, Cardboard Citizens, this intermittently successful piece often feels like the lengthy sea voyage it describes. Sometimes it treats the audience to such tempestuous images - both Shakespearean and modern day - that they burn indelibly onto the brain and heart. At other times it meanders with such little apparent purpose, that you yearn to reach the voyage's end.

One of the best reasons for lasting the course is to experience the vast, alienating warehouse where Pericles is staged as a promenade performance, and the scenes that evoke the stark and hostile situations individuals often face as they seek asylum. Such techniques, applied to a more concise work, could have a thunderous impact.

Until 9 August. Box office: 0845 1207543.

Pericles: RSC & Cardboard Citizens