Lupita Nyong’o, Peter Dinklage, Sandra Oh, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and More Present ‘Twelfth Night’

As William Shakespeare once wrote, some are born great. Some achieve greatness. And some have greatness thrust upon them—while dodging wild animals in a narrow hallway.

The Bard might have added that last part if he’d known about the Delacorte Theater. The longtime home of Shakespeare in the Park, the Delacorte is an open-air stage surrounded by the greenery of Central Park. Performing there has also meant tactfully ignoring woodland critters who wander onstage, sidestepping downpours that seep into the dressing rooms, and finishing shows even after the elements fry the theater’s soundboard. “That was sort of the scrappiness of it, the fact that you shared this space with the creatures of the park,” says Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who’s preparing for his seventh show at the august New York venue. “It’s part of the charm of the space.” But honestly? “I don’t want to compete for backstage space with raccoons.”

This summer, Ferguson finally gets his wish. The Public Theater, which operates Shakespeare in the Park, has spent nearly two years renovating the Delacorte. It reopens in August after an expansive $80 million makeover that includes more than 1,800 new seats, a façade reinforced with reclaimed wood, and an animal-proof barrier that will hopefully keep enterprising varmints in check. The Public will celebrate the occasion with a star-stuffed production of Twelfth Night that runs from August 7 through September 14 featuring Ferguson, Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage, and, in the roles of separated twins Viola and Sebastian, Lupita Nyong’o and her real-life younger brother, Junior Nyong’o—a recent drama school grad you may remember happily crashing Ellen DeGeneres’s group selfie at the 2014 Oscars.

The new production is a full-circle moment for the elder Nyong’o, who spent hours as a kid watching and rewatching a British production of Twelfth Night her family had on VHS. “I love the deception and the disguise, and how nothing is what it seems to be,” the Oscar winner says. “It’s ballsy, and it’s over the top, and it’s fun.”

Some time after her Twelfth Night obsession bloomed, Lupita got her first professional acting job in a different Shakespeare classic: Romeo and Juliet. Junior didn’t catch his then 14-year-old sister’s debut as the Bard’s tragic teenage heroine. (Why not? “I was five,” he deadpans.) But that production was where Lupita met Saheem Ali, the charismatic young man who was playing Mercutio. “He was a bright light,” she says. “He was very jovial. His eyebrows—they were so thick and animated.” Ali and his eyebrows have since nabbed two Tony nominations for best director. He’s the Public’s associate artistic director, the director of Twelfth Night, and one of Lupita’s closest friends.

Ali is drawn to Twelfth Night for many of the same reasons as Lupita. “It’s raucous,” he says. “It’s funny, it’s heartfelt. It’s really dark as well. At least, my version of the show is.” That darkness often isn’t teased out in productions, even if Twelfth Night is a comedy born out of tragedy.

Our story begins as a shipwreck strands Viola (Nyong’o) and Sebastian (the other Nyong’o) in a foreign land called Illyria. Believing that her brother may have died in the disaster, Viola disguises herself as a man named Cesario and goes to work for Orsino (Khris Davis), a duke hopelessly in love with Lady Olivia (Oh), who spurns his affection. This being a Shakespeare comedy, Olivia soon falls in love with the incognito Viola—and things only get more complicated when Sebastian emerges from the surf, unaware that Viola is still alive as he meets several characters who mistake him for his twin sister.

The play’s B plot focuses on Olivia’s uptight courtier Malvolio (Dinklage) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Ferguson), one of several malcontents who conspire, for entirely petty reasons, to ruin Malvolio’s life. Malvolio is a curious character: a wet blanket, a premodern hall monitor, and arguably literature’s first documented catfishing victim. “As soon as he starts to have fun, he’s thwarted in his joy,” says Dinklage. Malvolio is a far cry, in other words, from Tyrion Lannister, the witty fan favorite Dinklage played for eight seasons on Game of Thrones. Which, of course, was partly why the character appealed to the actor. “I don’t find it funny to humiliate someone else,” Dinklage says. “For me, comedy where you humiliate yourself is more funny.”

And nobody in Twelfth Night gets humiliated more than Malvolio. Aguecheek and company trick the steward into believing that Olivia is in love with him, prompting Malvolio to act so strangely that he’s imprisoned. Perhaps even worse, they goad him into wearing an exceptionally hideous pair of yellow stockings. When last we see Malvolio, he’s swearing revenge on his tormentors—then exits as the play’s various happy couples fall into one another’s arms. “It’s pretty horrible what they do to him,” says Ferguson. Twelfth Night, Dinklage adds, “has got a mean streak running through it. What they’re doing to him is mean. And we’re taking it up a couple notches.”

Ali plans to emphasize several of the play’s sharper edges, especially the ones that have contemporary resonance. In his version of the story, Viola and Sebastian are immigrants from “a place like Kenya,” where he and the Nyong’os grew up. When the twins finally have their long-awaited reunion, they speak Shakespeare’s lines in Swahili—their mother tongue, and one that nobody else in Illyria understands. “I love everything that Saheem is doing with bringing East Africa to the fore here,” says Junior.

Lupita is thrilled to be starring opposite her brother, particularly on such a celebrated stage. Casting the younger Nyong’o was Ali’s idea. So was calling Junior to tell him that he had snagged the role of Sebastian—without telling him that his sister was listening in, Mean Girls–style. “He called me and it was very cryptic,” Junior remembers. “It was a straight offer, and obviously I was already super geeked.” Then the actor thought to ask who would be playing Viola. At last, Lupita piped up, impishly trilling “Meee.” Says Junior, “I just lost my shit.”

Film audiences don’t often get to see Lupita’s mischievous side—her signature roles have been in heart-wrenching dramas (12 Years a Slave), fantastical action epics (the Black Panther and Star Wars movies), and fantastical action epics that are secretly heart-wrenching dramas (The Wild Robot). But Ali knows that despite its darker elements, his Twelfth Night will let Lupita’s personality shine. “She’s really, really funny,” he says. “She just does not get asked to do roles with humor very often.” Lupita, too, is eager to show off her comedy chops. “This play obviously is not going to be a walk in the park—pun intended. But I do think that the lightness of it will offer me a different kind of challenge,” she says. “I’m just looking forward to the shenanigans.”

Rehearsals for Twelfth Night have not yet begun when the cast gathers in New York for a Vanity Fair photo shoot. Until now, a few of them haven’t even met in person. But already there’s chemistry. Junior seems especially jazzed to make Dinklage’s acquaintance, announcing as they shake hands that his first name is actually Peter as well. (He’s named for his and Lupita’s father, Kenyan politician Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o.) Oh, ready for her close-up, swans past and calls out to Dinklage, “I can’t wait for you to hit on me.” As anyone would upon hearing those words from Sandra Oh, he replies that he can’t either.

Most cast members haven’t yet had a chance to dig into their characters—though Dinklage is already having anxiety dreams about not knowing his lines. But Oh, who hasn’t performed in a Shakespeare play since theater school, has begun to do her homework. “My instinct is that Olivia has been super serious for her whole life, and suddenly her inner drama queen just gets ignited because of her love for Cesario,” she says between bites of a banana. “Olivia is so bored with all these suitors. Viola steps out of her job as the count’s mouthpiece and injects her own wit and style. And that really just beguiles Olivia.”

Shakespeare in the Park is a unique institution, not least because it’s so democratic: The tickets are free. Even if you’re not a Public Theater donor and have to procure them via a digital lottery, say, or by standing in a very, very long line, the journey has its rewards. “The Delacorte experience starts before you’re in the theater,” says Lupita. “People are having picnics in their line. There’s music. There’s that community feeling.” Ali has felt it many times: “It’s the most generous, excited audience in New York. They’re charged. They’ve been waiting for it all day. You will never find a more electric audience.”

This year’s attendees may be especially thrilled to learn that Ali’s version of Twelfth Night is only 100 minutes long, with no intermission. In the original script, “there are references that are antiquated; there are plot points that are not as interesting,” the director says. “I pick the parts that I think work and just go from there.” And luckily, most of Twelfth Night still works, to put it mildly. “These plays are bulletproof. They give what you need to build a world, and then it’s up to you to decide what is meaningful to you—what you want it to say about the world that we’re in right now.”

Twelfth Night’s twisty plot and gender-bending elements make it ripe for a more modern take. “I love that it is Shakespeare that doesn’t make you feel dumb,” says Lupita. Ferguson agrees. “This is the type of show that brings new audiences to Shakespeare,” he says. “And with a cast like this, I think that’s even going to be more so.”

And don’t forget the allure of those shiny new seats. Though this will be Dinklage’s first time performing at the Delacorte, he’s attended shows there numerous times over the years: “I have been when it’s rained. I have been when an owl flew through the stage in the middle of the show and somebody had to duck. You hear screaming drunks somewhere far off in Central Park. I love it.” But no raccoons, please. “When I was young, I lived in apartments without any heat, with rodents and stuff, and I was like, Ah, it’s so cool to suffer,” says Dinklage. In reality, of course, he hated that experience even as he romanticized it. “So my answer is, I’m pretty psyched that they fixed it up.”

Hair, Vernon François (Junior Nyong’o, Lupita Nyong’o), Ben Skervin (Oh), Adam Markarian (all others); makeup, Nick Barose (Lupita Nyong’o), Francelle Daly (Oh); manicures, Eri Handa (all except Lupita Nyong’o); grooming, Nick Barose (Junior Nyong’o), Adam Markarian (all other men); tailor, Susan Balcunas; set design, Viki Rutsch. Produced on location by Viewfinders. For details, go to VF.com/credits.