Fireworks on the Hudson, crowds on the West Side Highway

Cheerwine tastes of my childhood summers:  a syrupy, cherry tang.

“For the rain it raineth every day.”

The line, from Feste’s wistful song at the end of Twelfth Night, does not usually elicit laughter from the audience.  But it does at the Delacorte, this summer, because seriously fuck this weather lately!  And that moment exemplifies one of the best aspects of seeing Shakespeare in the Park, the collective experience, the shared circumstances between actors and audience. (Again, seriously, fuck this weather!) My friends and I waited in the stand-by line through a thirty minute deluge.  But not in vain, and not without supreme reward.  Meaning, you should attempt to see this production too, weather permitting or not permitting. (Soon, I might add.  It closes next week.)  It is, by my reckoning, not only one of the best productions of Twelfth Night I’ve seen, but one of the best Park shows since I began seeing the Public Theater’s outdoor productions.

And so we have to talk about Anne Hathaway, as Viola.  I had reservations, and who would not?  The Public likes to toss these dewy young Hollywood ladies onstage, readiness or no (*Cough* Julia Stiles *Cough*).  But! Man, that kid is some kind of star. She acts!  She sings!  She dances!  She plays well with others (we’ll come back to this in a minute).  Hathaway is wholly committed to the role, the text, the outdoor theater experience.  She’s engaged.  And more than that, she makes it look like fun, not like work. (Sometimes a difficult feat.)  Reviewers have harped (albeit gently) on the lack of musicality in her speaking of the verse.  Pish.

In many productions, Public Theater or otherwise, due to the vagaries of casting or directorial impulses, the disparate elements of Shakespeare’s tales — the lovers’ through line and the clowns’ sub plots — fail to cohere.  This show gets it exactly right.  The ensemble, for this cast truly functions as such, manages to strike all the complicated notes of the play without discord.  The comedy is precise and the undercurrent of loss and woe is present, but so is this wonderful sense of mirth.  For this director Daniel Sullivan, whose recent “Midsummer” suffered from the problems previously mentioned, should be praised.  Also: these actors, you guys!  Audra McDonald.  Raul Esparza.  David Pittu. Julie (Transformers mom) White. Everyone else.  Read the cast list.  All Fantastic.

So many other things!  Stark Sands (dreamy!) manages to make Sebastian, Viola’s shipwrecked twin, not only not whiny but also endearing.  Finally, too, they managed to cast actors as twins who look convincingly enough so (factoring in the distance from audience to stage).  The show utilizes music, written by the indie-folk band Hem, to great effect, underscoring the action but not superimposing any outside feeling onto the text. The songs are stand-alone great.  It is also excellent that both Esparza and McDonald, possessing as they do such great voices, get to sing in the show. (It would be a crime if they could not.  Like displaying a race horse at a petting zoo, to borrow a phrase.)

So much to like, so little to harp on.

We left with a sense of triumph.  We’d triumphed over the stand-by line.  We’d triumphed over the elements.  We’d basked in the triumph of an ensemble of actors who strove to please us that evening, and so did. Excellently well.

Kayaking in the Hudson River

Riverside Park South

“Crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch, crooootch!”

No. 1 Hard (No One Hard?)

File this one under Books I Wished Would Never End:  The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

Why yes, I did take scads of photos of that rainbow arcing over the Brooklyn Bridge.  But then what else to do when confronted by such a thing?  (And also while waiting for that confounding rain shower to stop.)  The rest are here.