SOURCE: Kellaway, Kate. “Pericles and his Pulsating Pyjamas.” Observer (12 October 2003): 9.

In the following excerpt, Kellaway applauds the audacity of Neil Bartlett's artistic vision in his Lyric, Hammersmith, staging of Pericles, noting that the sparse hospital-like setting foregrounded the vivid drama of each episode.

Neil Bartlett's audacious treatment of Pericles suits it to perfection. This is a stunning production of a play that survives only in fragments—much of it not Shakespeare's handiwork. It would be good not to have to accept any substitutes—but necessary liberties have been taken: George Wilkins's The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608), is here employed to patch, if never invisibly to mend, the whole.

Bartlett works within the contrivances of the plot—enjoying its quirks—and yet creates a clearing within which Shakespeare's emotional climaxes are never obscured. Take Act Three—and the horror of the opening scene in which Pericles's...