'Twelfth Night' review: Shaina Taub's music is the food of love

If the theater world were to give an award for multitasking, Shaina Taub would have a lock on it.

The singer-songwriter whom director Oskar Eustis calls “one of the most creative theatrical minds of her generation” wrote the music and lyrics for “Twelfth Night,” this season’s closer at Shakespeare in the Park. She also plays the fool Feste (nailing a couple of her best songs), plays piano and accordion while conducting the band and even does a live version of the usually taped “welcome to the Delacorte, please turn off your cellphones” speech.

This is no ordinary production of Shakespeare’s much-loved romance, and not just because of Taub’s impressive contributions. An extension of the Public Theater’s five-year-old Public Works initiative, “Twelfth Night” was first presented over Labor Day weekend in 2016, earning rave reviews and an offer for this year’s five-week run at one of New York’s most cherished theatrical institutions.

It’s a program of inclusion, with members of groups from all over the city invited to work with established, big-name professionals. This production has more than 100, rotating in two casts, sharing the stage with Tony winners and Broadway regulars and holding their own (at least the red cast I saw) every step of the way.

Shakespeare’s tale of shipwrecked twins washed up on the shores of Illyria, each assuming the other dead, gets an abridged telling here, and purists will likely quibble with some of the liberties taken. Everyone else will have a great time watching the antics as Viola (the delightful Nikki M. James) dresses in grief as her brother, setting in motion a tangle of misguided relationships, but finding herself in the process. “I feel so seen as a guy,” she sings.

Other standouts in the cast include Shuler Hensley, having a fine time as Sir Toby Belch, rarely without a bottle in hand, and Andrew Kober as Malvolio, the manservant with visions of grandeur who ends up locked in a port-a-potty singing about middle school bullies. And from the community cast, a nod to the trio who beautifully signed one of the numbers and to Vivian Jett of the Brownsville Recreation Center, whose reprise of “Is This Not Love” was a knockout.

The happily-ever-after ending is a message of promise: “If we’d open our hearts to each other’s beat, what a better world it would be.” But, really, the whole production speaks to promise wherever you look, most especially in Ms. Taub’s direction.