SOURCE: Weber, Bruce. “Shakespeare's Game, without a Score Card.” New York Times (8 March 2002): B7; E7.

In the following review of Mike Alfreds's production of Cymbeline for the Shakespearean Globe Theater, which visited Brooklyn, New York, in 2002, Weber highlights the challenges and rewards of staging this sometimes absurd drama with only six actors.

Pick one. Cymbeline is a comedy in which a character is beheaded. It's a tragedy with a happy ending. It's a history that has elements of time travel. It's a romance in which the lovers are tiresome, and a story that celebrates family togetherness in which a mother and son are killed off.

It's something of a literary quiz in which Shakespeare quotes from himself. Among other things, there is a conniving, power-hungry queen like Lady Macbeth; a deceitful fabricator of jealousy-inspiring infidelities like Iago (and named Iachimo); a potion that induces a deathlike sleep seemingly...