Stratford Festival Reviews

Kuchwara selects Bartholomew Fair as one of the top shows: "They may call it the Stratford Shakespeare Festival but it is one of the Bard's contemporaries — Ben Jonson — who gets the most unexpected and satisfying showcase during the first half of the renown repertory theater's 2009 season."

"...as a pageant of colourful characters, the play is very entertaining, as is Jonson's street-level language. While there are many compilations out there of Shakespeare's insults, Jonson – who lived a much more raucous life, complete with charges of treason and murder – out-bawds the Bard at every turn."

Cushman notes that this is the play's North American premiere, 395 years after its British one, adding "... Jonsonian comedy, combining a thick text with the action of a farce, is a tough act; this is an encouraging start at cracking it."

"Cimolino's production is high-octane, pedal-to-the-metal, from start to finish"

"The astonishing thing about this script is that, in its portrait of a society wallowing in excess, it makes even more sense now than it did when first written in 1614."

The headline is worse than the review:"... even though Cimolino turns... Bartholomew Fair into an extended visit to a poorly conceived theatrical funhouse, he has at least ensured that it is a funhouse of the highest quality construction. "