SOURCE: McNulty, Charles. “Assassins and Romance.” The Village Voice 48, no. 6 (5 February-11 February 2003): 57.

In the following excerpted review, McNulty reviews the Classic Stage Company's 2003 production of The Winter's Tale, claiming that while Barry Edelstein's modernistic staging of the play was elegant and unhurried, the acting failed to display authentic emotion, leaving the audience unable to connect to the far-fetched story.

Shakespeare may be remembered for his great lines, but it's the characters that make us want to revisit his plays. If the matter were simply quotations, a Bartlett's would satisfy in place of an evening out. Maybe this is why Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and not Frank Kermode's Shakespeare's Language, has become the most widely cited Bard reference among active theater critics. Bloom, for all his dogmatic asides and crankiness, certainly clarified the “peculiar gift of inwardness” bestowed on Shakespeare's protagonists. What draws us—and...