What Do The Reviews Say About Twelfth Night at Free Shakespeare in the Park?

What Do The Reviews Say About Twelfth Night at Free Shakespeare in the Park?

The star-studded outdoor production, directed by Saheem Ali, plays the newly renovated Delacorte.

The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night, which began performances August 7, officially opened August 21, and the reviews are rolling in! The production continues through September 14 at the newly renovated Delacorte Theater.

Saheem Ali directs the production, which he’s trimmed down to 90 minutes. Twelfth Night is the first production at the Delacorte following the theatre closing for the last two years to undergo an almost $80-million renovation.

The cast includes Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) as Malvolio, Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Take Me Out) as Andrew Auguecheek, Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther) as Viola, Sandra Oh (Killing Eve) as Olivia, Daphne Rubin-Vega (Rent) as Maria, Junior Nyong’o as Sebastian, b (Netflix’s You) as Antonio, Khris Davis (Death of a Salesman) as Orsino, John Ellison Conlee (The Full Monty) as Sir Toby Belch, Ariyan Kassam as Curio, Valentino Musumeci, Moses Sumney (MAXXXINE) as Feste, Kapil Talwalker (Night Court), Joe Tapper (You Can’t Take It With You) as Sea Captain/Priest, Dario Alvarez, Jaina Rose Jallow, Precious Omigie, Chinna Palmer, Nathan M. Ramsey, Jasmine Sharma, Julian Tushabe, Adrian Villegas, Ada Westfall, and Mia Wurgaft.

How to Get Tickets to Free Shakespeare in the Park in New York City

This Twelfth Night is the seventh time the romantic comedy has been presented in the series, following earlier stagings in 1969, 1986, 1989, 2002, and 2009, plus a Public Works musical adaptation (by Kwame Kwei-Armah and 2024 Tony winner Shaina Taub) in 2018.

Read the reviews below.

1 Minute Critic (Matthew Wexler)

CitiTour (Brian Scott Lipton)

CultureSauce (Thom Geier)

The Daily Beast (Tim Teeman)

The Front Row Center (Tulis McCall)

La Voce di New York (JK Clarke)

New York Magazine/Vulture (Sara Holdren)*

New York Stage Review (Steven Suskin, Melissa Rose Bernardo)

The New York Sun (Elysa Gardner)*

New York Theater (Jonathan Mandell)

New York Theatre Guide (Joe Dziemianowicz)

The New York Times (Laura Collins-Hughes)*

The New Yorker (Helen Shaw)*

Observer (David Cote)

TheaterMania (Zachary Stewart)

The Wall Street Journal (Charles Isherwood)*

READ: Sandra Oh and Daphne Rubin-Vega Have a New York Summer

For those who cannot attend, PBS will broadcast the play November 14, beginning at 9 PM ET (check local listings). The program will be broadcast as part of PBS’ Tony Award-winning Great Performances series. Twelfth Night will also be available to stream on PBS.org or the PBS app.

The production also has scenic design by Maruti Evans, costume design by Oana Botez, lighting design by Bradley King, co-sound design by Kai Harada and Palmer Hefferan, composition by Michael Thurber, hair, wig, and makeup design by Krystal Balleza, prop management by Claire M. Kavanah, fight direction by Tom Schall, and choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie. Karishma Bhagani is the Swahili dialect coach.

Delacorte veteran Buzz Cohen serves as the production stage manager, and Jessie Moore and Luisa Sánchez Colón serve as the stage managers.

Since its inception in 1954, the Free Shakespeare in the Park series has been an annual summer offering completely free to the public, with tickets usually distributed at various locations throughout the boroughs of NYC. The program often recruits A-list actors to lead its outdoor productions, which focus on the Shakespeare canon but have also included stagings of such works as Into the Woods, Hercules, and Hair. In past productions of Twelfth Night alone, the series has seen performances from Jeff Goldblum, Anne Hathaway, Nikki M. James, Hamish Linklater, Audra McDonald, Michelle Pfeiffer, Fisher Stevens, Julia Stiles, Michael Stuhlbarg, and more.

For more information, visit PublicTheater.org.

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Photos: Shakespeare in the Park’s Twelfth Night