Twelfth Night

It's almost embarrassing to write this post. It seems a bit too New Yorky and romantic even for me. Its about free outdoor theater in Central Park under the stars on a lovely evening in the summertime. I'm just a a big fat cliche of myself. I know.

At any rate-- Alex and I all but stumbled across the Public Theater's production of Twelfth Night on Sunday of last week. We planned to spend Sunday in the park, no particular 'plans' other than being outside, so sitting in a line for four hours didn't sound so bad. And it wasn't. Quite pleasant, actually. (Six degrees of Kevin Bacon was played more than once and we both kind of rock at it.)

If you know anything about Shakespeare in the Park you know that getting tickets is a bit of a nightmare. Although free, the tickets are very valuable in that there aren't enough to go around, not even close. We were told to wait in the 'cancellation line' which was about four steps removed from actually receiving the tickets. But we did get tickets (God knows how) and we were two of the three hundred or so lucky New Yorkers to see Anne Hathaway perform Twelfth Night under stars in Central Park that night.

The play itself wasn't much the point at all, to be honest. It was Shakespeare proper, unabridged and unaltered. We laughed at the jokes not because they were necessarily all that funny, but because that's what you do when you watch Shakespeare. You play too. We were all there for the spectacle. We were there for Anne Hathaway and for Audra McDonald and for the romance of it all.

The set was well thought and the costumes intentional. The actors were having fun and the bluegrass band edged sixteenth century England into twenty first century New York. The moon was almost full and temperature bobbing around 75 degrees. All in all--I'm going to apologize in advance for saying this-- it might have been the perfect New York night.