At the launching of The Shakespeare Project, Marilyn Stasio of The New York Post, called it "the adventurous Shakespeare Project involving the five guests from the Royal Shakespeare Company...a unique venture." Stasio added, "Everybody at the opening night party, including such members of the theatrical community as Milo O'Shea, Barnard Hughes and Gloria Foster, seemed to want to a regular event of the unprecedented project.""Riverside opens its Shakespeare Center", by Marily Stasio, The New York Post, October 22, 1983. In the evenings, the five actor also performed a "five-hander" version of Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, and the New York premiere of D. H. Lawrence's The Tarnished Phoenix.
