By Matthew Wexler
At a recent performance of Twelfth Night at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, Public Theater executive director Patrick Willingham took to the stage before the play began to rev up the audience and stress the importance of access to theater and cultural institutions. While it wasn’t quite Henry V’s “Once more onto the breach, dear friends, once more” speech, it was pretty damn close.
The outdoor amphitheater, closed for renovation for 18 months, is now brought back to life with director Saheem Ali’s rousing and star-packed production of one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies (proven by the fact that the Public has produced the play seven times).
Ali’s imaginary Illyria is such stuff as dreams are made on, a magical but intentionally nondescript world in which the tempest of separated twins, a desperation for love, and gluttonous mischief are the follies of the players rather than the place.
Still, Ali leans into the perceived “otherness” of twins Viola and Sebastian (played by real-life siblings Lupita and Junior Nyong’o), peppering the condensed script with nods to his native Swahili, and culminating in a final reunion that transcends Shakespeare’s original English text.
Scenic designer Maruti Evans leans into the play’s subtitle, three-dimensionally magnifying “What You Will” so it towers over the action. The antics include bachelorette Olivia (Sadra Oh) and her lady-in-waiting Maria (Daphne Rubin-Vega), deliciously devious uncle Sir Toby Belch (John Ellison Conlee) and his cocaine-snorting sidekick Andrew Aguecheek (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), and the lady’s uptight steward Malvolio. Peter Dinklage brings a taffy-like physicality to Malvolio, proving as adept at physical comedy as he is at iambic pentameter.
A triumphant gender-defying curtain call, costumed in glorious technicolor by Oana Botez, further challenges the recent assault on creative expression and the arts, demonstrating that joy is an act of resistance. And there’s nothing more joyful than the return of Free Shakespeare in the Park.
Twelfth Night plays at the Delacorte Theater through September 14.
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‘Twelfth Night’ takeaway
There’d be no Public Theater without its founder, Joseph Papp, an ambitious producer and advocate for free theater. Papp died in 1991, and five years later, Grand Central Publishing released Helen Epstein’s epic biography, Joe Papp: An American Life. At nearly 600 pages, expect a Papp pu pu platter, including reflections on the most significant theatrical hits of the 20th century, such as A Chorus Line, Hair, and The Normal Heart.
