A true titan of the theatre will take the stage with an exceptional cast for Shakespeare in the Park’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tony winner Phylicia Rashad (A Raisin in the Sun) plays Titania, Queen of the Fairies in one of the bard’s most twisting comedies. Youth, love potions, deep forests, magic and a stumbling acting troupe collide for a night of summer mischief and hilarity that can’t be missed.
Delacorte Theater’s resident Director Lear deBessonet’s vision for Shakespeare’s most produced play on Earth will be a sight to behold. The cast features De’Adre Aziza (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Passing Strange), Kyle Beltran (In The Heights), Vinie Burrows (Samara), Austin Durant (War), Shalita Grant (Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike), Patrena Murray (The Death of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World), Bhavesh Patel (Present Laughter) Richard Poe (All The Way), Danny Burstein (Fiddler on the Roof), Annaleigh Ashford (Kinky Boots), and more.
Fifty years after interracial marriage was legalized in the United States, it’s a joy to see so much diversity reflected in every on-stage pairing, each of which is multiracial. Representation matters and when it comes to casting, Helena says it best in this play: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.”
With any luck, this play won’t be disrupted like the last Shakespeare offering from the same theater, and we’ll bow to Queen Phylicia any day.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is offered at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park July 11 – August 13, 2017.
