SOURCE: Bruckner, D. J. R. “Hopscotching from Hilarity to Mourning, with Groundlings in Thrall.” New York Times (19 August 1998): E5.

In the following review of the Kings County Shakespeare Company production of Pericles, directed by Jonathan Bank, Bruckner praises the wide range of emotional responses that the play elicited from the audience and notes the “disorderly” nature of the plot.

If it's not in Pericles, maybe it isn't possible in theater. This wonderful old bag of tricks has everything—murder, kidnapping, drowning, lost children, resurrections, political intrigue, divine vengeance, a bordello redeemed by a virgin, admired rulers whose sex lives would arch Satan's eyebrow, pimps, homicidal jealousy, labor induced by a hurricane, birth onstage and eternal love. The opening scene portrays father-daughter incest so vividly that television would have to warn you to shield your children from it. What a play!

Of course, it is a little disorderly, taking...