Review: Twelfth Night Reopens Shakespeare in the Park

There’s a moment in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (usually Act 2, Scene 4) when Duke Orsino, the most powerful man in Illyria, realizes that he is inconveniently falling in love with his young male page. Directors tell this story in different ways, but it typically involves an unmistakable spark of attraction that passes between the actors playing Orsino and Viola, who at this point is disguised as Cesario, a newcomer whom Orsino has been using as an emissary in his courtship of Countess Olivia, the most powerful woman in Illyria and an ideal political match. Equally inconvenient, Olivia has also fallen for Cesario. I’ve felt that intangible spark of sexual connection in every staging of Twelfth Night I’ve ever witnessed—until last Saturday, when I caught the new Shakespeare in the Park production.

Before I get into what that means for the play, I should note that this is the first production in the newly renovated Delacorte Theater following last summer’s hiatus. The theater looks excellent, but even if it didn’t, I would still be grateful for the little civic miracle that is free Shakespeare in the Park.

Director Saheem Ali’s staging has a lot going for it, chiefly memorable comic performances from Peter Dinklage as Olivia’s uptight upstart steward Malvolio, Jesse Tyler Ferguson as permanent houseguest Andrew Aguecheek, and John Ellison Conlee as an appropriately repulsive Sir Toby Belch (witness the latter two snorting lines of coke off the side of Olivia’s noble hot tub). Daphne Rubin-Vega joins them as an overworked, underwhelmed Maria, with Kapil Talwalkar’s Fabian like a little brother—positively giddy to be included in the high jinks. All five actors smartly undergird cartoonish physical comedy with real stakes. Dinklage’s rage in his final moment is palpable, and makes one pine for a sequel.

Ali gestures toward the ongoing migrant crisis in the Mediterranean by having Viola (a charming Lupita Nyong’o) wash up on the shores of Illyria in a rubber dinghy. He also translates chunks of her soliloquys, and those of her lost twin brother Sebastian (real-life brother Junior Nyong’o), into Swahili. In a play in which the inciting action is a shipwreck, it feels like the obvious choice.

Making his stage debut in the role of Feste, film and recording artist Moses Sumney casts an immediate spell over the audience, gorgeously incanting Michael Thurber’s new musical settings of Shakespeare’s timeless verse.

Most surprising is the heart-wrenching performance given by b is the tertiary role of Antonio, whose unrequited love for Sebastian takes on a raw urgency that is far more compelling than anything transpiring between our central characters.

This has little to do with Sandra Oh, who delivers a beautifully vulnerable performances as Olivia, a woman who has been suddenly thrust into the seat of power and is furiously improvising a visage of stony resolve (a pair of shades plays a key role in her new image). The moments when the mask drops and we are allowed to glimpse the awkward middle-aged woman hiding beneath feel deeply relatable.

Not so with Khris Davis, who never lets up on the pampered hip-hop mogul schtick this production has grafted onto Orsino. We first encounter him delivering his “If music be the food of love” speech while performing bicep curls in front of a giant fresco of himself.

When Act 2, Scene 4, does come around, it opens with Cesario giving the Duke a massage, which would seem like a perfect pretext to jumpstart desire, but none is forthcoming. Unfortunately, Nyongo’s begrudging approach to the task conjures thoughts of Diddy. I wasn’t surprised when she later delivered her “were I a woman” speech directly to the audience rather than staring into Orsino’s eyes, which would be the more natural choice for such a thinly veiled confession of desire. But she’s just not that into him.

Ali compensates for this giant void at the heart of his production with first-rate design elements, including Bradley King’s enchanting lighting and pristine sound by Kai Harada and Palmer Hefferan. Scenic designer Maruti Evans presents a parade of lovely antique furniture pieces, which pop up from the trap door to create each scene, like we’re at Christie’s. It’s harder to justify the giant red letters upstage spelling out the subtitle, “What You Will,” which feels like a TLDR takeaway written across the page. Oana Botez has certainly put a lot of thought and effort into the costumes, especially during the curtain call when each character dons a personalized runway-fabulous look designed to blast through the gender binary. It’s colorful. It’s joyous. It looks a lot like the finale of Kinky Boots.

And it all feels expected coming from a theater that seems increasingly nostalgic for the 2010s, a decade that saw some of its biggest successes. The identity-obsessed, multicolor-flag-waving politics that emerged from the late Obama era are alive and well at the Public, but they have developed a musty aroma. And I’m starting to suspect they make some liberals comfortable because of the way they drown thoughts of sexual desire in feathers and sequins.

Twelfth Night, written 423 years ago, feels downright radical by comparison. It’s a play about love’s capacity to surprise us, ruin our well-laid plans, scramble our political certainties, and acquaint us better with ourselves. It’s a story we desperately need in this decade, as our brittle sexual taxonomy breaks down and desire draws us out of our alphabetized foxholes. I look forward to watching Ali and the Public go on that journey. But as Viola and Sebastian could tell you, you cannot discover new lands without first losing sight of the shore.