Theater beneath the stars! Plays in the park! A fine, midsummer’s night dream of top-flight art brought free to the public! Not Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream, in this case, but the dream of the late Joseph Papp, who devoted the early years of his career—long before he established the Public Theater on Lafayette Street—to fighting metropolitan bureaucracy in a quest to establish a foothold for free theater in Central Park. The open-air Delacorte Theater—funded mostly by a $150,000 gift from George Delacorte, of the Dell paperback publishing house—opened in 1962 and was kept intact, albeit with patchwork repairs, for 60 seasons. The fresh-air arena has now been rebuilt and revitalized with some $85 million dollars worth of renovations, and now it has reopened with a brightly cheery Public Theater production of Shakespeare’s breezy romantic comedy of mistaken identity, Twelfth Night.
The aim of Shakespeare in the Park has always been to bring the classics, free of charge, to the local citizenry. Over the course of time, Papp & Co. learned that enduring success came not from authenticity, with strict adherence to the text, but from overall entertainment. And so it is with this Twelfth Night, produced by the present Public team of Oskar Eustis and Patrick Willingham and directed by resident director Saheem Ali. Starting once-upon-a-time in the Balkan state of Illyria, Ali and his uncredited adaptor (likely Ali himself?) have the action and the characters drift across time and place at will. At times illogically, perhaps, but it all manages to resolve with a happy and entertaining conclusion.
The evening begins under Central Park skies with the fool Feste (Moses Sumney) singing a song founded on the Bard’s immortal “all the world’s a stage” speech. But wait! That’s not from Twelfth Night, now, is it? Chalk it up to poetic license, although not necessarily poetic license from Shakespeare himself. The first dialogue, following that musical prologue, is altogether unintelligible; after a baffled moment, you realize that they have chosen to modernize the text by swapping Shakespeare’s mother tongue for some unspecified language. Swahili, likely. That’s not in the original; neither is Count Orsino’s workout session with barbells and flunkeys doing pushups, the hot tub scene with Sir Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek, the full-scale boxing regalia for the fight between Aguecheek and his romantic rival (he thinks), or the interlude in which Belch watches the proceedings while munching from a box of movie-house popcorn.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Numerous Shakespearean productions, over the last hundred years at least, have seen fit to switch locales, eras and other features in the attempt to bring the audience into the action, often with great success. Typically, though, the purveyors concentrate on one specific time and place. On the present occasion, they seem to have worked on a scene-by-scene basis rather than devising a consistent whole. Kind of a “gee, what would be funny here?”
That might be why the scenes which are played relatively straight work better. And why the performers who play those scenes come off better than their colleagues who are busily fishing for laughs. Specifically, Lupito Nyong’o (Viola) and Sandra Oh (Olivia) provide skilled, delightful performances which bring a contemporary feel to the production while retaining an authentically Shakespearean flavor. Peter Dinklage is something of a wonder as Malvolio. He properly captures the character’s ridiculously priggish outlandishness, yes; but there’s something sympathetic about Dinklage’s performance that leaves you caring for this Malvolio. (Note to the director: Shakespeare’s original text—as well as the present adaptation of same—purposefully stresses the use of yellow tights and cross-garters. Knee-high yellow boots with brown laces are not nearly the same thing, leaving Will’s grand sight gag needlessly diminished.)
Junior Nyong’o, as Sebastian, comes across especially well despite diminished playing time; if it makes little sense for Viola to speak Swahili to Illyrian citizens (and Central Park viewers) who likely can’t understand a word she’s saying, the non-English exchange during the climactic meeting of Viola and Sebastian—here played by real-life siblings—is incredibly touching. Sumney does a fine job as the fool, singing on occasion to notably enjoyable musical settings from composer Michael Thurber and donning the gown of Sir Topas for the Malvolio exorcism scene. Also making a strong showing in the relatively tiny role of Antonio is the performer who bills themself simply as “b.”
Conversely, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, John Ellison Conlee, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Khris Davis—fine actors, all—strain to mine laughs from the “funny” material handed to them. They succeed much of the time, but give the impression that they are working in overdrive.
If the adaptation is challenging, Ali (of Fat Ham) does an artful job as director. The expansive stage is bare save for large letter blocks spelling out Twelfth Night’s original subtitle, “What You Will.” Random scenic pieces appear and vanish through traps in the deck, but we get a play without walls, and under Ali’s strong hand it works very nicely. (The scenic designer is Maruti Evans.) Oana Botez provides some exceedingly colorful costumes, significantly so in the curtain call. Bradley King’s lighting supplements the natural beauty of the setting, with Belvedere Castle overlooking the stage. Ali also makes excellent use of music from an onstage string quartet, with composer/conductor Thurber offstage on a synthesizer.
The disparate elements come together, more or less, combining for a wholly satisfying evening. Albeit one with little of the exuberance that has marked various Shakespeare in the Park outings going back to the 1971 rock musical rethinking of Two Gentlemen of Verona and the glorious Civil War-era Much Ado About Nothing as well as the more recent Comedy of Errors and As You Like It. Even so, this Twelfth Night does a satisfactory job of leaving the audience beaming, and that, after all, ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Twelfth Night opened August 21, 2025, at the Delacorte Theater and runs through September 14. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
