Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...It's quite the coup de theatre in a hugely cinematic, heavily underscored production that drips with so much heartfelt theatricality, passionate acting and fearless romantic storytelling that it unequivocally lands this 3-hour hybrid right into the lap of a clearly enthralled and delighted audience."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...In the final scene of director Barbara Gaines' exhilarating, expertly played new production of "Cymbeline," now at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, both actors and audience engage in a deliciously complicit exercise in grin-grin, wink-wink. And the giggles, as well as the genuine emotion beneath these high spirits, have all been duly earned during the course of three action-packed hours."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...Vigorously told and enthusiastically acted, it's an affectionate, highly theatrical production of a knotty, plotty play whose complicated story overshadows its statements about family, love and loyalty, repentance and forgiveness."
SouthtownStar - Highly Recommended
"...Gaines' production -- which opens slowly but gains speed in the second act -- offers such wondrous special effects and superb performances that the play is transformed from one of Shakespeare's most disappointing works to that of a laugh-filled comic triumph."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...Chicago Shakespeare Theater artistic director Barbara Gaines shows once again that she can transform Cymbeline into a thoroughly engaging and rollicking piece of theater."
Chicago Free Press - Somewhat Recommended
"...something is rotten in ancient Britain this time around. Overwrought and underfelt, this emotionally unearned revival amplifies all the play’s flaws—Cymbeline’s change of heart, the lack of any reconciliation between the quareling lovers, the clown Cloten’s silly speeches. It comes off as a sitcom on steroids, with the audience supplying the laugh track. (But, since they come at the expense of the play’s paltry plausibility, these are not cheap laughs.) In 1989 the play’s problems were brilliantly camouflaged; 18 years later, they seem to be the reason for this all too “entertaining” revival."
Gay Chicago Magazine - Recommended
"...I would expect more depth from a company like Chicago Shakespeare, but the production more than makes up for this with delightful humor, thrilling action and a crowd-pleasing conclusion. With this charming story, as with this charming production, how wonderful to make sweetly right so many wrongs."
EpochTimes - Highly Recommended
"...In " A Funny Thing Happened on The Way To The Forum", in the opening number we are told that "Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight" is what we are about to witness- in Barbara Gaines production of Shakespeare's seldom done "fairy tail", "Cymbeline" we are able to get both the comedy and tragedy and done to perfection."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...director Barbara Gaines, in her third crack at the text, sees enough human folly in the action of Cymbeline to steer the whole enterprise in a stark but comedic direction (even the decapitation gets played for macabre humor), and her resultant stripped-bare production is bright, tart and muscular."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Cymbeline is one of William Shakespeare’s late romantic tragicomedies about love, fidelity and deception. Based on a legendary British tale, Cymbeline is a most enchanting magical fairy tale filled with the richly sophisticated production values that have been a hallmark of director Barbara Gaines and her production team at Chicago Shakespeare Theater over their 21 years."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...The production is sleek and stark, with plenty of rolling fog and beautiful period costumes by Susan E. Mickey. Even when it feels like a rehash of many better Shakespearean efforts, "Cymbeline" is still an appealing fairy tale of struggle and hope, a nice start to a new season."
