'Measure for Measure' roils Central Park

Anyone smitten with the idea of Shakespeare comedies as role models for idealized love doesn't know "Measure for Measure" and "All's Well That Ends Well," the disturbing and twisted works being explored this summer, in repertory, at the Public Theater's beloved free Shakespeare in the Park.

Unlike director Daniel Sullivan's aptly dark but drab and unpersuasive "All's Well," which opened Saturday night, David Esbjornson's "Measure for Measure" skims over some of the play's ugliest elements with fantastical bawdy imagery, passionate acting and inspired comic bits.

The result is an enjoyably theatrical, if not deep, solution to a problem play that indicts the hypocrisy of moral zealotry while using marriage as punishment for villains and cads. For the blameless brides, this is meant as a reward. And the romantic hero (Andre Holland), condemned to death for getting his girlfriend pregnant, tries to save himself by pimping out his sister (the radiantly furious Danai Gurira), a cloistered novice.

Oh, well, it's all in good fun, right? At least most of it is in this production, with comic practice-executions interrupting solemn exchanges, acrobatic devils in black rubber suits and tarts in sculpted naked breast plates. The witty costumes, by Elizabeth Hope Clancy, blithely traverse the centuries, in contrast to Scott Pask's utility double-decker set with its heavy wooden beams of oppression.

Lorenzo Pisoni combines nobility and endearing awkwardness as the Duke of Vienna, a liberal who goes undercover as a friar to watch while his severe deputy (a formidably scary baby-faced Michael Hayden) cracks down on freedom while feeding his own lust.

Esbjornson -- whose subtle production of "Driving Miss Daisy," starring Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones moves to London this fall -- turns out to have a delightful way with stock comic characters, including Carson Elrod as a punk Pompey, David Manis as a blissfully maladroit Elbow, Lucas Caleb Rooney as an indifferent bully of a prisoner and Reg Rogers as yet-another tipsy rogue.

Tonya Pinkins has a light touch as a garish madam, Annie Parisse keeps her dignity as yet-another wronged woman and John Cullum, as an old lord, again proves himself to be a theatrical treasure. He is never foolish, but always in on a great cosmic joke.