New York theater audiences tend to play it exceedingly cool when the famous arrive to catch a show. A global movie star can walk in without causing a discernible ripple.
But there are celebrities and then there are celebrities.
Minutes before a preview performance of “Twelfth Night” at the freshly renovated, newly back-in-business Delacorte Theater in Central Park last week, a delighted murmur fluttered through the crowd. One of the theater’s storied resident raccoons was strolling nimbly along the top of the house-right wall. Sometimes summer glamour comes draped in fur.
Other times it’s wrapped in a citrus-orange life jacket. That is how we first glimpse Viola, the resourceful romantic hero of “Twelfth Night,” which opened on Thursday evening in an energizingly comic production whose casting with so many boldface names veritably screams, “Shakespeare in the Park is back, baby.”
Played by Lupita Nyong’o, Viola sits aboard a rubber life raft in the opening scene. She has been rescued by a sea captain from a shipwreck in which she believes her twin brother died. We feel her defenselessness as she self-soothes, crossing her bare arms and giving herself gentle little pats. Yet even in her shock, she retains her luminosity.
Arriving a bit early, though, isn’t she? Doesn’t Shakespeare begin “Twelfth Night” — which is, after all, a festive confection — with the infatuated Duke Orsino uttering the famous line, “If music be the food of love, play on”?
Saheem Ali’s production hasn’t cut it, but merely decided that Orsino can wait. By flipping the first two scenes, and giving Viola the play’s final line, Ali has recentered a character who has been known to get lost in the overstuffedness of this comedy. And by having her speak initially in Swahili — “Je, hii ni nchi gani, bwana?,” or “What country is this, sir?,” she asks the captain — Ali establishes her firmly as a person arriving, in unaccustomedly desperate straits, on the shore of a foreign land, Illyria.
Sounds political, doesn’t it, but this is not a production that wears its civics on its sleeve. It’s a romp, a tonic, an escape from the clamorous world into a fantasy. The words “what you will,” an all-caps nod to the play’s full title, “Twelfth Night, or, What You Will,” tower over the proceedings upstage, and a string quartet adds a touch of luxury. (The set is by Maruti Evans, the sumptuous lighting by Bradley King.)
At the show’s comic center is a performance by Peter Dinklage, as the officious steward Malvolio, so lithely funny and dexterously humane that on its own it would be reason enough to see this “Twelfth Night.” Here is another: the disarmingly charismatic performance by Junior Nyong’o, younger brother to Lupita, as Viola’s lost twin, Sebastian — and yes, they do look enough like each other that the mistaken-identity gags work.
More on all that shortly. First, a smidgen of convoluted plot.
Needing to survive in Illyria, the well-born Viola disguises herself as a young man named Cesario and lands a job serving Orsino (Khris Davis). Cesario quickly becomes the duke’s loyal confidant, and his go-between in his relentless quest to win the countess Olivia (Sandra Oh). She rejects his overtures unwaveringly, always has, yet Orsino will not be dissuaded.
Turned out in a chic pinstriped suit and tastefully pale tie (costumes are by Oana Botez), Cesario has no personal designs on Olivia. In fact, he — well, Viola — is pining for the handsome Orsino. But the countess develops such a heedless insta-crush on Cesario that her dignity goes out the window within minutes of their meeting, and she sends Malvolio chasing after him.
And so we see Malvolio in dogged pursuit while Cesario pedals blithely around the vast stage, Pee-wee Herman-style, on an old-fashioned red bike. The image is ridiculous, surprising — one moment of silly-smart physical comedy among many in this production. Under the Manhattan sky, with the park’s greenery as backdrop, a scene that’s rarely interesting becomes something a little magical, even if Malvolio is panting on the ground.
Dignity takes a lot of dings in “Twelfth Night” — and poor, self-important Malvolio, who runs Olivia’s household and dreams of winning her heart, is its most rigid enforcer. If it were up to him, never again would he cross paths with her carousing uncle, Sir Toby Belch (John Ellison Conlee), and his cowardly, late-night sidekick, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).
The dissolute Andrew is also supposedly attempting to woo Olivia, but he’s no better at that than he is at anything else. Toby at least has some success with Maria (Daphne Rubin-Vega), Olivia’s attendant, who doesn’t mind keeping the two men company in their alcohol-swilling, weed-smoking, coke-snorting revels.
At the start, the Toby-Andrew antics are less funny than they need to be; the humor, and the inebriation, are pushed too hard. But by the time they’re sitting in a hot tub listening to Olivia’s fool, Feste (Moses Sumney), sing a mellow, pretty version of “O Mistress Mine,” they have hit their stride — and Toby is entirely right to hold up a lighter in stoned appreciation of the song. (Music is by Michael Thurber.)
The revenge trap that Maria, Toby and Andrew lay for Malvolio — a mean practical joke that preys on his vanity and goes way too far — is the play’s Achilles’ heel, but it’s well done here: funny, then just the right degree of heartbreaking when Malvolio ends up alone and tormented in the dark. Dinklage, loose and loopy within the verbal and physical precision of his performance, has the audience’s sympathy every step of the way.
As for the lovers and the separated twins (spoilers ahead), you know the ending will be happy; it is a comedy.
By chance, Sebastian arrives in Illyria with Antonio (played by the actor known as b, excellent), who saved him from the shipwreck. Sebastian is kind as can be in discouraging Antonio’s doting amour, and absolutely darling when Olivia spies him and mistakes him for Cesario.
Unlike his sister, Sebastian is walking on air at Olivia’s overtures. And Oh belatedly gets her best comic moments — appearing in a wedding dress and tiara, priest in tow, about two seconds into her acquaintance with Sebastian. “Blame not this haste of mine,” she says, and whisks him off to wed.
The Nyong’o siblings’ casting sounds like a gimmick, but the payoff is exquisite: the twins, dazed at their reunion, establishing the truth of their identity as they talk to each other in Swahili.
For the audience, too, this “Twelfth Night” is a kind of reunion — with the Delacorte, a vital space that New York theatergoers depend on, and missed. It speaks our language.
Twelfth Night
Through Sept. 14 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes.
The post ‘Twelfth Night’ Review: Lupita Nyong’o in Illyria appeared first on New York Times.
