SOURCE: Simon, John. “Parlous Pericles.” New York 31, no. 45 (23 November 1998): 87-8.

In the following review of the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival production of Pericles, directed by Brian Kulick, Simon strongly criticizes the director's staging of the play as a farce.

Pericles is so imperfect a play that scholars postulate either a collaboration with a lesser dramatist responsible for the first two acts or, likelier, a revision of a lost earlier play by a hack, to which Shakespeare warmed only in the latter part as his involvement grew. It is based presumably on a likewise lost Hellenistic novel about Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, hugely popular through many medieval and Renaissance versions. But in no version is this tale about the whims of fortune, the endurance of trials, and miraculous events a farce. For that, it took Brian Kulick, artistic associate of the Public Theater, to place...