Twelfth Night in the Park

This week, I experienced a true New York gem—seeing Shakespeare in the Park on a cool August evening. After a long hiatus due to COVID and a renovation of the Delacorte Theater, Shakespeare in the Park has returned with Twelfth Night, a beautiful play about family, community, and the immigrant experience. 

New Yorkers have welcomed this performance, having long awaited its return. This past week, people joined queues at 11 p.m. the night before just to ensure they could get the free tickets that became available at noon the next day. This democratic ticket distribution attracts a very specific audience. All kinds of people attend: those who have long lived in New York and seen shows at the Delacorte since the ‘80s, and those who have never seen Shakespeare before. Whatever the case, everyone in the audience truly wants to be there. 

The show was unforgettable, with a star-filled cast: Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and, of course, Lupita Nyong’o and her brother Junior, who played twins. In the show, set in the mystical land of Illyria, two siblings—Viola and Sebastian—wash ashore. Viola, stranded without her brother, must find a way to survive, and so she pretends to be a man, devoting herself to her work as a Lord’s gentleman while her brother Sebastian searches for her. This play, though sprinkled with frat bro jokes and modern dance breaks, ultimately tells the story of immigrants in a new land, working to support themselves and find a community. 

As the show is directed by Saheem Ali, a Kenyan immigrant, and the show’s twins are both of Kenyan origin, some lines were delivered in Swahili. Particularly at the end of the play, when the two finally find each other, the emotional lines are spoken in Swahili, deepening this moment of reunion by demonstrating how the siblings are able to revert to their mother tongue. 

Concluding with a drag-esque dance break and vocal performance, Twelfth Night truly was a “joyful romp,” highlighting the value in multicultural interpretations of Shakespeare and free public art.