The Delacorte reopened after an eighteen-month renovation, yet Central Park’s wildlife made an immediate appearance when a raccoon scurried along a wall during a performance. The production of Twelfth Night is directed by Saheem Ali and features Lupita Nyong'o as Viola, Sandra Oh as Olivia, and Peter Dinklage as Malvolio. Maruti Evans's set leans into a high-school-prom, selfie-ready Illyria with red-flowered flooring, a string quartet, and towering illuminated letters reading WHAT YOU WILL. Nyong'o’s Viola is spirited and inventive, adopting improvised male mannerisms, while Oh’s Olivia is impulsive and quickly falls for Viola.
On the Saturday evening that I saw "Twelfth Night, or What You Will," the sole production of the Public Theatre's Shakespeare in the Park summer season, a raccoon scurried furtively along the top of a wall at the Delacorte. "Twelfth Night" marks the exuberant reopening of the open-air venue, after an eighteen-month renovation that promised, in part, to solve the amphitheatre's raccoon problem. Central Park's wildness, though, shall not be denied.
One look at the set, designed by Maruti Evans, tells you that Ali and company are trying to underscore the comedy's romance, if in the high-school-prom sense of the word: the floor is patterned with red flowers, a string quartet plays as the audience finds its seats, and, at the back edge of the stage, thirteen-foot-tall letters spelling out " WHAT YOU WILL " glow red and purple under lighting designed by Bradley King.
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