SOURCE: Gupton, Janet. Review of Cymbeline. Theatre Journal 51, no. 1 (1999): 78-80.

In the following review, Gupton evaluates Andrei Serban's 1998 New York Shakespeare Festival production of Cymbeline, set in the city's Central Park, and contends that “even Serban's magic with the actors, set, and text could not weave together all the disparate elements that make up the tangled web of Cymbeline.”

Set against the backdrop of Central Park and the Delacorte Theatre, the set of Andrei Serban's production of Cymbeline blended with its surroundings. Four trees were nestled atop a grassy mound, a circular sand pit took center stage and a moat of water surrounded most of the outer perimeter of the stage just in front of the audience. Serban used all of these natural elements in a moving but sometimes uneven production of one of Shakespeare's problematic romances.

Cymbeline challenges director and cast to tell a convoluted story of...