A buoyant ‘Twelfth Night’ floats through the summer night in Central Park

A buoyant ‘Twelfth Night’ floats in Central Park

NEW YORK — Sometimes everything just comes together.

The exuberance that permeates “Twelfth Night” has been magically captured by the Public Theater’s buoyant Central Park production of what is Shakespeare’s most melodious comedy.

This revival practically floats through the night air at the outdoor Delacorte Theater where a sterling ensemble shines in the Bard’s blissful take on mismatched romances and the things besotted creatures do for love, both real or imagined.

It’s that chaotic confusion that director Daniel Sullivan has marshaled so effectively in this playful revival which features Anne Hathaway as the cross-dressing Viola, Audra McDonald as the ardent Olivia and Raul Esparza as the noble Orsino.

The story starts with a shipwreck, tossing Viola on the shores of the ever-verdant kingdom of Illyria, here a majestic carpet of green by set designer John Lee Beatty.

But it’s the play’s gender-bending that puts the plot into motion as Hathaway, disguised as a young man, serves as a go-between for the love-struck Orsino and the imperious Olivia. Of course, Olivia falls for the messenger, as does the understandably bewildered Orsino who doesn’t realize his new manservant is a she.

And we haven’t even gotten to Viola’s missing twin (played by Stark Sands), also a victim of that shipwreck and whose late-evening reappearance guarantees a happy ending.

The delightful, Juilliard-trained McDonald breezes through the verse as does Esparza, who handles the language as comedically as he did the profanity-laced dialogue in David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow” on Broadway last season.

Hathaway, an Oscar nominee this year for “Rachel Getting Married,” is entirely at ease in their company. She brings a sweet demeanor to her double-edged role that is at the center of Shakespeare’s tale.

“Twelfth Night” is infused with an abundance of humor, and Sullivan has cast the show with a parade of supporting actors who happen to be incomparable clowns. If the play has a villain, it’s Olivia’s pompous steward, Malvolio (played by Michael Cumpsty), who also pines for Olivia.

Yet Cumpsty’s performance is so delightfully comic that he earns the audience’s sympathy even though his comeuppance, planned by the play’s other laugh-getting pranksters, is justly deserved. Those conspirators are an august group, headed by Olivia’s spirited maid, played by the effervescent Julia White and the hedonistically inclined Sir Toby Belch, brought to vivid life by Jay O. Sanders.

Major scene-stealing is committed by Hamish Linklater, who portrays Olivia’s most comic suitor, the dithering Andrew Aguecheek. Linklater finds a daffy slacker sensibility in what often is one of Shakespeare’s most annoying purveyors of humor.

The actor is matched for laughs by David Pittu, as Feste, a fool who’s supplied with the play’s wittiest banter. Pittu is a nimble farceur as well as an excellent singer, and he gets the largest share of the evening’s tuneful songs, Shakespeare’s words set to original music by Hem, a quartet of writers/performers.

But then “Twelfth Night” is awash in lyricism and has been fodder for musical-theater adaptations in the past. Among the efforts: off-Broadway’s long-running “Your Own Thing” (1968) and “Music Is,” a one-week wonder on Broadway in 1976.

Too bad this production isn’t scheduled to make the move there. It would add luster to any Broadway season.

“Twelfth Night” runs through July 12. It will be followed in Central Park by Euripides’ “The Bacchae,” Aug. 11-30.