SOURCE: Isherwood, Charles. Review of Pericles. Variety 373, no. 1 (16-22 November 1998): 42-3.

In the following review of the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival production of Pericles, directed by Brian Kulick, Isherwood faults the weak cast and stylistic treatment, but grants that the “convoluted saga” presented in the play contributed to the production's failure.

Shakespeare's late romance Pericles is a kind of hymn to the cycles of life, in which wrongs are miraculously righted, wounds healed, demises undone, so it's a pity indeed that Brian Kulick's new production at the Public Theater is so deadly. A chilly ceremonial style adds a distancing layer to a play that already contains enough disjunctions and fantastic reversals to give audiences pause. What's needed is a humanizing touch to bring to the fore the beauty in the play's conception of life as a series of storms over which only purity of...