THE PLAY'S THE THING

“Twelfth Night” reopens the Delacorte.

- HELEN SHAW

Khris Davis, Sandra Oh, and Lupita Nyong'o star in the Bard's love triangle.

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. This “Twelfth Night,” directed by Saheem Ali, comes fully stocked with celebrities—including Lupita Nyong’o as Viola, Sandra Oh as Olivia, and Peter Dinklage as Malvolio. But, for a few moments, the raccoon was our star.

A part of me did notice that we were lacking a certain animal nature onstage. 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. The letters, which actors sometimes pose alongside (Oh perches punningly in the O), recall those giant signs which give tourists a place to take selfies. It’s Illyria as a step-and-repeat photo-call: red carpet, big stars, major rebrand.