[In the following review of Nicholas Hytner's Twelfth Night, Brustein contends that the production failed to explore the play's deeper issues and complexities. Brustein applauds Helen Hunt's solid interpretation of Viola, but notes that Kyra Sedgwick's Olivia is somewhat hyperactive.]

Summer Shakespeare has always been a joy because summer is a season that belongs to Shakespeare. No other dramatist has imagined so vividly the bracing pleasures of life in the woods. A country boy himself, he gave his own name to a rustic in As You Like It and his mother's name to the Forest of Arden. The allure of that Arcadian world, where the banished Duke Senior finds “tongues in trees” and “sermons in stones,” not to mention the magical properties of Titania's fairy kingdom, the coastal beauties of Duke Orsino's Illyria, the bumptious rusticity of Polixenes's Bohemia, and other such bucolic sites, provide a storehouse of images that remain an indelible source of comfort through the long winter months. Two recent summer Shakespeare productions lovingly capture those recreational images—not just through verbal metaphors but through the splendors of their physical design.

Nicholas Hytner's version of Twelfth Night at the Vivian Beaumont is distinguished by another exquisite setting from Bob Crowley, an Irish scenic artist who is finally receiving the recognition here he has long deserved. Crowley's last assignment with Hytner was Carousel, a musical the designer turned into a dazzling retrospective of early twentieth-century American art. Enhanced by Catherine Zuber's costumes, Crowley's Twelfth Night is set in an exotic court out of The Arabian Nights, bounded by circular wharves stretching out to a distant sea. Even before the lights come up, Orsino (Paul Rudd)—a bare-chested, long-haired Eastern potentate—is lolling languorously near a bathing pool in a drug-induced torpor, listening to Jeanine Tesori's Oriental melodies being played on bongos and gamelans. Drowsy, languid, overfed on the food of love (music), this Orsino is almost always in the company of musicians. Accompanied by three sailors, Viola (Helen Hunt) enters from far upstage, in a seagreen gown, wading through shimmering water and mist. Accompanied by her ladies in waiting, the Countess Olivia (Kyra Sedgwick) enacts her grief in a large arbor under huge black umbrellas, moving in rhythm to a requiem.

In tune with contemporary fashion, the production is set in no consistent culture, place, or time. Sir Toby Belch (Brian Murray) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Max Wright) wear contemporary Western clothes, and, at one point, eat some Chinese takeout. The acid fool Feste (David Patrick Kelly) hops about in a green suit, an orange knitted cap, and sandals, and sings “Oh Mistress Mine” in the style of a soft rock ballad with electric guitar arpeggios. When Malvolio dons his yellow stockings, he attaches them to a pair of shorts.

The problem is that Hytner's inspiration seems to have stopped with the sets and costumes. Certainly, Brian Murray's Sir Toby and Max Wright's Aguecheek are an engaging pair of clowns. Looking and sounding like the old movie actor Cecil Kellaway, Murray plays that renegade sot with all the florid gestures of a classical ham. But his exploitation of Sir Andrew has a streak of mean cunning, suggestive of the way that, later, Iago will gull Roderigo. As for Max Wright, he makes another rich artistic gift to Lincoln Center, following his contribution last year as Lebedev in Ivanov. His voice quavering through his glottis like a constipated bellows, his body jerking through space like a mechanical toy, he becomes the very embodiment of craven idiocy, of false bravado. Terrified by Sebastian, he jumps into Orsino's pool and frantically backstrokes away. I also admired the way David Patrick Kelly managed to emphasize not so much Feste's amiable charm as his bitter foolery. He is largely motivated by a sour vindictiveness toward Malvolio (“And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges”).

Alas, this gifted acting trio is not helped much either by Amy Hill's flat Maria (cast against type as a buxom Amazon), or by Philip Bosco's humorless Malvolio. I once described Bosco as an American actor who looked like Sir Michael Redgrave and sounded like Sir John Gielgud. Here he seems to be bucking for his own knighthood, giving an elocutionary performance that would not seem out of place at the Royal National Theatre. Bosco's Malvolio is pompous all right, but it's questionable whether that quality belongs more to the character or the actor.

Helen Hunt gives a clean, clear, cool interpretation of Viola. She reads the verse in a controlled, informal manner, and moves with considerable grace and poise. But her air of sangfroid would have been more appropriate in the role of Olivia. Hunt would certainly have given a better account of that proud, regal woman than Kyra Sedgwick, whose brassy, squeaky hyperactivity belongs in a sitcom. (Her charms become more vivid when, having jumped into the pool with Sebastian, she emerges with her dress clinging to her wet body.) Hytner has staged a fine recognition scene where the reunion of Viola and Sebastian rises in an emotional swell, and there are other good things in the evening. But the deeper issues of the play often seem to be scanted, especially the ambiguous sexuality of the relationship between Olivia and Viola. Most of the pleasures of this Lincoln Center Twelfth Night are absorbed through the eyes. …