SOURCE: Brustein, Robert. “Pastoral Shakespeare.” The New Republic 219, no. 10 (7 September 1998): 26-8.

In the following review of Nicholas Hytner's Twelfth Night, Brustein contends that the production failed to explore the play's deeper issues and complexities. Brustein applauds Helen Hunt's solid interpretation of Viola, but notes that Kyra Sedgwick's Olivia is somewhat hyperactive.

Summer Shakespeare has always been a joy because summer is a season that belongs to Shakespeare. No other dramatist has imagined so vividly the bracing pleasures of life in the woods. A country boy himself, he gave his own name to a rustic in As You Like It and his mother's name to the Forest of Arden. The allure of that Arcadian world, where the banished Duke Senior finds “tongues in trees” and “sermons in stones,” not to mention the magical properties of Titania's fairy kingdom, the coastal beauties of Duke Orsino's Illyria, the bumptious rusticity of...