SOURCE: Merwin, Ted. Review of Twelfth Night. Theatre Journal 51, no. 2 (1999): 191-92.

In the following review, Merwin offers a mixed appraisal of Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night. The critic argues that Hytner and stage designer Bob Crowley failed to create an atmosphere of eroticism, and that the romance between Paul Rudd's Orsino and Helen Hunt's Viola was lukewarm at best. However, Merwin offers high praise for the performances of the supporting cast, particularly Philip Bosco's Malvolio.

A splashy new production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in New York was a feature attraction of the 1998 Lincoln Center Festival last summer. The well-traveled team of English director Nicholas Hytner and Irish stage designer Bob Crowley, who in 1994 brought to the Beaumont, from London's Royal National Theatre, an uncommonly dark and disturbing (and intensely stirring) production of Carousel, this time opted for a strategy of almost total...