SOURCE: Berlin, Normand. Review of Cymbeline. The Massachusetts Review 40, no. 1 (spring 1999): 137-53.

In the following excerpted review of the Royal Shakespeare Company's staging of Cymbeline at Stratford, Berlin observes that director Adrian Noble's extensive cuts of the play-text contributed to an increased energy in the performance, but seemed to diminish its magic and romance as well.

Adrian Noble's Cymbeline, which the RSC performed first in Stratford and then in the large Barbican Theatre where I saw it, did not fare much better [than Twelfth Night]. The play's unfamiliarity, the fact that it is seldom performed, helped spark some interest. Although not considered one of Shakespeare's so-called “problem plays,” it does pose a problem of genre—is it a tragedy, as the First Folio indicates, or a comedy, as most modern productions (including this one) suggest, or a tragicomedy, as most scholars use the term? It certainly offers a...