Twelfth Night
Lucky, lucky Anne Hathaway. Look, no one can dispute the girl’s got talent, from her breakout role as the gawky royalty of The Princess Diaries to her Oscar-nominated turn in Rachel Getting Married last fall as the jittery wreck Kym who tries to keep it together for just one special family function. She brings that edginess and discomfort to the role of Viola in this year’s edition of Shakespeare in the Park, and acquits herself well, but she’s not up there alone: Most stage actors, from Hollywood or elsewhere, would kill for the ensemble cast set to put her through her paces.
Director Daniel Sullivan updates Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy about the girl who can fill out a pair of breeches all right to a lightly implied 19th century and lets his Broadway pros strut their stuff, from Julie White demurely clad in an off-kilter veil (a bawd of a subtler sort, as bawds go) to Raul Esparza looking like he hadn’t slept since Speed-the-Plow closed. (Even Stark Sands, whose visual match with Hathaway in boy’s clothes is the most we really see of his talents, has a Broadway credit to his name, from war drama Journey’s End.)
Esparza may not have made his name in Shakespeare, but his Count Orsino is melancholy without being mopey, and he has a certain chemistry with Hathaway even in their man-to-man segments. Audra McDonald’s Olivia is interesting until, in the second half of the play, Sullivan lets the diva leash go slack and replaces crazy-in-love with, well, just crazy, but she is a rare misstep. David Pittu’s Feste, when he doesn’t have his hands full cueing the band for delicate but memorable music (the band being Brooklyn folkies Hem), jests most gently, and Hamish Linklater (late of The New Adventures of Old Christine, saith IMDB) is a gem of a scene-stealer as the normally underdeveloped Sir Andrew Agucheek.
About the only element that seems to be a serious misfire is the set, which in accordance with the recession seems to have been designed not to fit the entire stage, and in its shiny grassiness is a sad afterimage of last summer’s hippie Hair carpeting -- but the raccoons seem to love it.
This is Hathaway’s first Shakespeare in the Park outing, and hopefully it won’t be her last, but she has hopefully begun to pay off the karmic debt accrued from having such support in her debut bow. Next year the crowds may not roar so loud for "For the rain it raineth every day," but the seats will stay drier than the eyes.
Through July 12 at the Delacorte Theater, Central Park, New York. No performance on July 4, added performance on July 6. Performances of Twelfth Night will be Tuesday through Sunday at 8pm. Limited ticket distribution: June 16, July 9. For more information visit the Public Theater website.
