By Lucy Komisar
The Public Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” is a disappointment.
First surprise, the event starts with a Chinese woman who arrives on stage. She tells a story of how she came to New York a decade ago, her kid had problems (maybe autism, I forget), she went to school to help out. They thought she was so good they hired her. Please tell me what her ten-minute personal history had to do with Shakespeare!!!! Is this a woke satire? No, I think it was serious. For whatever its purpose.
And then I noticed the large screen (one of three just to the left of my view to the stage that ran the text and distracted me. The story turned out to be a version of Cliff Notes. The plot was there, but the Bard’s poetry was often distorted.
An example, from the Public’s text:
VIOLA If nothing lets to make us happy both But these nguo zangu za kiume, Do not embrace me till each circumstance Of mahali, wakati, bahati do cohere and jump That I am Viola – which to confirm I’ll bring you to a captain in this town, Where lie my maiden weeds, by whose gentle help I was preserved to serve this noble count. All the occurrence of my fortune since Hath been between this lady and this lord.
From Folger Library text:
VIOLA If nothing lets to make us happy both/ But this my masculine usurped attire,
Do not embrace me till each circumstance/ Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump
That I am Viola; which to confirm,/ I’ll bring you to a captain in this town,
Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help/ I was preserved to serve this noble count.
All the occurrence of my fortune since/ Hath been between this lady and this lord.
I am fine with modernizing the productions of Shakespeare’s plays. Peter Brook famously used tennis racquets in a 1968 staging of “The Tempest.” But he kept the poetry.
Viola and Sebastian, sister and brother, are shipwrecked and arrive separately in Ilyria. (The place is historically on the Adriatic Sea across from Italy.) But there will be repeated dialogue and screen text in Swahilli, a language of Kenya, no explanation why, except that the actors who play the shipwrecked siblings are from Kenya, about as connected to the play as the lady from China.
Viola (Lupita Nyong’O, a charmer) floats in on a rubbery dingy. She disguises herself as Cesario, a man.
In Ilyria, men in suits are twisting around the glistening muscular body of Duke Orsino (Khris Davis), in love with the Countess Olivia (Sandra Oh), whose brother has died and who refuses to see suitors. Cesario gets herself appointed as aide to Orsino. One man, two women, the essential triangle.
But then some weird director’s choices. Toby, Olivia’s uncle is brought to the court in a red wheelbarrow (?). There is some swordplay with Cesario. When somebody in the entourage says something wrong, he has to do pushups! (?)
Then when the dialogue descends to hip hop, many of us above the age of Gen X don’t understand anything. Maybe that’s the reason for the text monitor.
Back to the play, Malvolio, Olivia’s self-absorbed steward, is played by a midget. It’s woke, not described as such by the Bard, but still a fine choice because Malvolio is a surreal character and Peter Dinklage is excellent in the role.
Also fine is Maria (Daphne Ruben-Vega), Olivia’s lady-in-waiting in sunglasses and a Brooklyn accent. She devises a nasty plot to entrap Malvolio. There are many women. Don’t recall it from Shakespeare, pre-feminism.
Sebastian (Junior Nyong’O), very good as Viola’s brother, arrives in Ilyria. His aide is Antonio (b). (I find calling yourself by one letter so pretentious! b (lower case) who appears to be played by a woman, but who knows these days, is also good). She kisses him on lips. What? But he and Olivia connect, of course.
There’s a lot of curious visual stuff, characters in a bathtub, the famous Malvolio imprisoned cruelly in a cross-striped cage, at the end most of the men dressed garishly as women (what???).
I got the feeling we were summoned there to watch the director’s personal preferences in gender, etc., and forget poor Shakespeare. I think the actors were fine, they did what they were told. Problem is how can a director make (legitimate) political points while still preserving the artistry of Shakespeare? Not done in this production.
“Twelfth Night.” Written by William Shakespeare. Directed (and obviously adapted) by Saheem Ali. The Public Theater, Delacorte Theater, entrance West 81st Street/Central Park West and East 79th Street/Fifth Avenue, NYC. Note on arriving in Central Park from West 81st Street there was, unlike in the past, no arrow to tell people which fork in the road to take. Hint, it was the path on the right. In the Delacorte’s multimillion-dollar reconstruction, how much does a sign cost? Runtime 2 hours. Opened Aug 21, 2025, closes Sept 14, 2025.