The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, a cultural landmark where Shakespeare has long been offered freely to New Yorkers, has always been a place where magic feels within reach. With the return of Twelfth Night under the direction of Saheem Ali, the Public Theater’s summer tradition reaffirms its mission: to make theater both accessible and urgent, a mirror held up to today’s society.
A Production Full of Lightness and Urgency
Ali’s Twelfth Night condenses Shakespeare’s text into a swift, intermission-free evening, running just under two hours. The decision is practical, but it also gives the play a sense of momentum: the comedy tumbles forward, misunderstandings pile on each other, and the audience is carried along in waves of laughter. What might, in another production, feel like leisurely Elizabethan farce becomes here a breathless New York evening where every beat counts.
Visually, the staging is understated yet imaginative. The set recalls a gallery of shifting frames — walls that suggest both aristocratic interiors and public squares, ready to dissolve into whatever setting the story demands. It is a Shakespeare stripped down, but not diminished. Instead, it becomes a playground for actors, where gestures and language are enough to conjure the world.
Ali’s cultural flourishes deepen the production. The choice to weave in Swahili between Viola and Sebastian adds a sense of familial intimacy and cultural grounding, expanding Shakespeare’s Illyria into something both universal and personal. It reminds the audience that this is not merely Shakespeare preserved in amber, but a living, breathing performance that speaks to identity, migration, and the collision of languages.
The Ensemble: A Constellation of Stars
This Twelfth Night boasts an ensemble that feels like a celebration in itself.
- Lupita Nyong’o (Viola) imbues her role with dignity and warmth. Her Cesario is witty, resilient, yet touchingly vulnerable, allowing the audience to believe in both her disguise and her heart’s conflict.
- Junior Nyong’o (Sebastian), as her twin, mirrors her energy while carving out his own charm; his arrival untangles the knot of mistaken identity with grace.
- Sandra Oh (Olivia) commands the stage with her regal presence, balancing mourning with sudden, almost comic infatuation. Her transition from solemnity to smitten absurdity is one of the production’s delights.
- Khris Davis (Duke Orsino) offers a duke who is both passionate and vain, embodying the folly of love that Shakespeare so often skewers.
- Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Sir Andrew Aguecheek) and John Ellison Conlee (Sir Toby Belch) provide raucous comic energy, though their revelry at times overshadows the play’s subtler emotional currents.
- Daphne Rubin-Vega (Maria) steals scenes with cunning wit, orchestrating the infamous prank on Malvolio.
- Moses Sumney (Feste) elevates the role of the fool with haunting musicality. His voice lingers in the air, turning jokes into riddles and laughter into reflection.
And then there is Peter Dinklage.
Peter Dinklage: Malvolio as an Unstoppable Force
It is no exaggeration to say that Peter Dinklage’s Malvolio becomes the gravitational center of this production. Whenever he steps onstage, the atmosphere shifts. The other actors, though accomplished and often radiant, orbit around his performance, as if he were both anchor and engine of the play.
Dinklage approaches Malvolio not merely as a comic foil, but as a complex human being — proud, ambitious, and tragically susceptible to ridicule. The famous scene with the forged letter, in which Malvolio convinces himself that Olivia secretly loves him, becomes a masterclass in controlled frenzy. Dinklage contorts his dignity into giddy hope, his severity into something desperate, almost childlike. When he appears in yellow stockings, the audience roars with laughter, but the humor is laced with unease: this is a man undone by both vanity and cruelty.
He holds the stage with such force that he could, it seems, replace the entire cast and still fill the night with energy. Dinklage is a volcano — erupting with humor, trembling with suppressed rage, glowing with humiliation, yet never losing the professional control of an actor at the height of his craft. He is simultaneously wild and precise, volcanic and calculated.
The paradox of Dinklage’s Malvolio is what makes him unforgettable. His physical comedy borders on the grotesque, yet his eyes reveal a flicker of tragedy. When he storms out with the line “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” the laughter dies quickly, replaced by silence. The cruelty of the prank is suddenly laid bare, and Malvolio becomes less the fool than the scapegoat — the human cost of Illyria’s games.
This duality — hilarity on the surface, pain beneath — is Dinklage’s gift to the production. He elevates Twelfth Nightfrom a mere summer comedy into something darker, sharper, more lasting.
Strengths and Shortcomings
The production thrives on its energy, inclusivity, and inventiveness. The use of music, the quick pacing, and the sheer charisma of the ensemble make it accessible even to audiences unfamiliar with Shakespeare. It is joyous, irreverent, and unpretentious.
At times, however, the romance is rushed. Viola and Orsino’s eventual union, while touching, lacks the depth that could make it fully satisfying. Olivia’s grief, too, is sketched quickly before being replaced with comedy. Some of the revelry, especially between Toby and Andrew, risks becoming indulgent, stretching gags past their point of freshness.
Yet these are minor quibbles in an evening that mostly soars.
Conclusion: The Night Belongs to Dinklage
Ultimately, this Twelfth Night belongs to Peter Dinklage. The ensemble is strong, the production is lively, and the Public Theater deserves praise for keeping Shakespeare both free and relevant. But it is Dinklage who makes this evening essential.
He is not merely a performer but a phenomenon: an actor whose presence is so commanding that he could hold the Delacorte stage alone, sustaining it with sheer fire. In his hands, Malvolio ceases to be a clownish servant and becomes a tragicomic study of ambition, cruelty, and resilience.
If Shakespeare in the Park exists to remind us why live theater matters — why we gather in the dark to witness words centuries old spoken anew — then Dinklage delivers that reminder in full. He is proof that one actor, unrestrained yet utterly professional, can ignite a city’s summer night.