A sweet Cymbeline.

Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare's enigmatic late plays, where the lines of comedy and tragedy blur into deeply rendered psychological layers, where the poetry of our greatest poet seems effortless by now, where the master wrights four and five and six plots together with both dizzying complexity and surprising clarity. 

In Central Park's current and free production, the set looks like an exploded theatrical trunk from which the actors seem to have scavenged their own anachronistic costumes. It is pure whimsy, but so carefully wrought that nine actors fill out the dozens of roles. And it is altogether fitting that we crown the real-life couple of Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe our reigning actors of the venue. They are accomplished artists with many splendid gifts, but more alluring to me is the way they have endeared themselves to the festival atmosphere of Shakespeare in the Park. Their gusto is utterly infectious.

The evening is at times silly and rambunctious but in its more affecting moments (and there are a remarkable number of them) it had me in tears. More seems to be at stake for these lovers than in the earlier tragedies. Or comedies for that matter. Shakespeare trods a middle ground here that punches me in my gut a little harder, because we are so off kilter throughout this play, laughing when we've been crying, only to be plunged into Imogen and Posthumus' sorrow all over again.

Underscoring much of the evening is a truly wondrous musical score that pointedly aids the complicated story line, but wisely gets out of the way when Shakespeare's images float unaided into the trees of Central Park. The funeral dirge, Fear No More the Heat of the Sun, touched me with such a sweet sadness that I never wanted it to end.

The evening is three hours long. And again, I never wanted it to end. To hear a pin drop in New York City as Imogen pleads for her death from grief is as magical as hearing thousands of people scream with laughter at Linklater's other antics in his dual role as the loutish peevish Napolean Dynamite-esque Cloten or Raul Esparza's oily and hilarious lounge-y turn as Iachimo.

I got to see the show tonight, forgoing the day-long line, thanks to my talented friend Kate DeWall who is now Master Electrician for The Public Theatre. She was an intern when I met her. She is a star. But mostly, like all the interns I've met, she is a star because she is a star of a person.

Dear friends, if anyone ever offers you the chance to see Shakespeare, go see it? I was bone-weary after a long tour today. And there is nothing like sitting in community, in the dark, while the most beautiful words in the English language parade themselves through your head. It is ennobling. It is a great grand joy.