Twelfth Night

From schools to homeless shelters to prisons to community centers, the Public Theater’s Mobile Unit brings Shakespeare to the people — and the people to Shakespeare. This season, the Mobile Unit celebrates 60 years of igniting dialogue and fostering connections with a vibrant new production of the gender-bending, heart-mending comedy Twelfth Night. When a shipwrecked young immigrant named Viola takes a chance on the “wet foot, dry foot” policy of the mid-1990s and washes up on the shore of glitzy Illyria, Florida, she finds herself a stranger in a fabulously strange land. Thinking her twin brother has drowned, Viola throws herself into a new gig as assistant to Orsino, a wealthy Floridian with a serious case of lovesickness for a wealthy lady named Olivia. Having disguised herself as a boy to become Orsino’s right-hand man, Viola (now Cesario) is tasked with delivering his adoring valentines. But as Viola woos in her boss’s name, she falls head over spiky heels for the man himself, while Olivia turns her affections to the intriguing young messenger boy, Cesario (formerly Viola). Set to the rhythms of house, Cuban, and ’90s beats, Saheem Ali directs this colorful comedy about the power of new people and new experiences that throw the world into beautiful disarray, and open hearts and minds to the possibility of love.