SOURCE: Sommers, Michael. “Shakespeare's Tough Nut Stays in Shell.” The Star Ledger (19 April 2001): 63.

In the following review of Troilus and Cressida directed by Sir Peter Hall at the American Place Theatre in New York, Sommers finds the production “ambivalent” and praises only a few individual performances.

The great warrior Achilles is dismissed as “a fusty nut with no kernel” by someone in Troilus and Cressida, and if it's badly produced, Shakespeare's strange episode from the Trojan Wars could easily be described in like terms.

A corrosively cynical behind-the-scenes look at legendary heroes, Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare's most experimental and least-performed works. Dwelling upon inconstancy in both love and war, the drama itself is marked by inconsistent characters and unsettling shifts in tone. A whirling weathervane of a play that screams for bold direction to point it in one way or another, Troilus and Cressida receives...