SOURCE: Isherwood, Charles. Review of The Winter's Tale. Variety 379, no. 7 (10 July 2000): 31.

In the following review, Isherwood assesses the Public Theatre's version of The Winter's Tale directed by Brian Kulick, arguing that the production is not successful in handling the shift from the tragedy and drama of the first half of the play to the pastoral comedy of the play's second half. Isherwood additionally comments on the shortcomings of Keith David's Leontes and Erica N. Tazel's Perdita.

All of Shakespeare's plays pose formidable challenges for actors, but perhaps none are tougher than the upheavals and reversals that pepper the Bard's late “romances.” The Winter's Tale, for example, boasts a king whose emotional eruptions seem to arrive and recede by authorial fiat, and a doomed queen who disappears for a good hour, only to resurface posing as a statue in the play's final moments. Most surprisingly, the play's true heroine...