No one actor overshadows another. Cumpsty plays Malvolio, a role which could easily be exaggerated, to a tee as a straitlaced comic foil. Anne Hathaway, it turns out, has a delightful singing voice. Audra McDonald can command a stage. There were some line flubs (the night I attended it was still in previews), but it was an amazingly natural and harmonious performance as a whole.
As a whole, too, it should be noted that the experience of seeing the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park series is both long and delightful. Tickets are free. Yep, free. To get them, however, you must wait in line the day of the performance, and sometimes people line up for hours beforehand and still don't get tickets when they are handed out at 1 pm. If you do sit outside in Central Park all morning to get tickets (or enter the virtual line, which I've never had any luck on), then you have to return to the theater at 8 for a three-hour play. That's a long day.
As for the delightful: The Public Theater plays at the Delacorte Theater on the lake at Central Park facing the Castle. My only quibble with the set design is be that you miss the view of the lake that you would have without the raised green hill. But a summer's evening watching a comedy by Shakespeare played by an illustrious cast in the middle of Central Park for free certainly ranks high on my list of delightful things. Sometimes it is refreshing to go back to the basics.
Twelfth Night runs through July 12.
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