The last time I wrote about Twelfth Night at the Public’s Delacorte Theater, I took issue with a performance that sacrificed the play’s rich ambiguities for a relentless sing-along perkiness, a too-wide smile that, while part of a meaningful civic project, lacked theatrical teeth. Now, the whirligig of time has brought all three of us back around: Twelfth Night, in a fancy new production directed by Saheem Ali and featuring Lupita Nyong’o , Sandra Oh , and Peter Dinklage ; the Delacorte, after 18 months dark for an $85 million makeover ; and me, after my own hiatus from bright lights and aisle seats, now writing this with a baby asleep in my lap.

It’s good to be back, and the Delacorte looks great, but I’m beginning to worry that when it comes to Shakespeare in the Park, the

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