Late Saturday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Black Henna Productions presents "Twelfth Night" at McCarren Park

Late this afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds as we sat through an absolutely delightful performance of our favorite Shakespeare comedy, Twelfth Night, with the intrigue set at an American-style summer camp, presented by the talented crew at Black Henna Productions, who did a similarly lighthearted and playful production of Much Ado About Nothing here at McCarren Park two summers ago.

This was, if anything, even more enjoyable -- and that's saying a lot, because we've seen two other wonderful park productions of Twelfth Night in the past few weeks. Well, we think you can never see Twelfth Night enough, so we're grateful Black Henna Productions brought this production to our neighborhood.

Of all the many plays, mostly Shakespeare, we've seen in parks in four boroughs, McCarren Park is probably the most challenging place -- perhaps along with Carroll Park -- to stage a theatrical production. (Apart from Black Henna's Much Ado and Twelfth Night, we saw two plays here, New Lions Productions' 2010 Comedie of Errors and The Glass Bandits Theater Company's 2011 The Little Mermaid

McCarren has no bandshell or amphitheater like Riverbank State Park or Marcus Garvey Park or a pagoda or Oriental pavilion like Prospect Park, no natural outcropping like the rocks at Central Park's Mineral Springs or the hills and wide expanse of Fort Greene Park. Sound travels easily, and today there was almost incessant loud music coming from the other side of the field house, with occasional but tolerable noise from the boys' soccer game behind the audience, near the Lorimer Street edge of the park. So Black Henna gets mucho props just for staging this event here.

We knew, though, it would be best to sit in front, because even the best actor's voice can be challenging to hear. Luckily, we've still got most of our hearing and we hardly had any problems. Anyway, this was an imaginative reimagining, a summer camp -- in the program, each character is given his or her role ("Camp Morale Officer Malvolio," "Head Cook Toby Belch," and the wry "Accountant/Ombudsman Feste") and the scenes are located ("Sir Toby's Mess Hall," "The Volleyball Court of Orsino," "Antonio's Waterfront Dock," "Olivia's Administrative Cabin"). This is funny stuff, and here Johnny Young has directed with a light and light-hearted touch in every way.

For example, Antonio, usually played with dark intensity, is here played shrewdly by Chris Wentworth as a camp kid's version of a pirate, complete with removable eyepatch (hilariously worn on different eyes in different scenes), bandana with the skull and crossbones, an "Aargh!" and the drawing syllables of "saaarvant" for "servant." That Wentworth's Antonio appears to be paired off at the end with the various delicious characters played by Cas Marino -- a treat to watch as he morphs from an effeminate Captain to a doddering Priest to the drawling backwoods Officer who arrests Antonio, sometimes without doing more than exchanging one prop for another.

We'd never seen Malvolio played by a woman before, and Susan E. Young (who with Mark Dunn, who has a sweet singing voice and some glib patter as Feste, composed some original music played here, presumably over a boombox or something hidden in the bushes) is a lady Malvolio much distracted even before she is gulled into the lighter people's plot. The lion puppet that she affects in the early scenes with Olivia, Maria and Feste is priceless, and she appears to be very, very nervous throughout, even before her dark torment, which here seems like adolescent mean-girl bullying.

Ian McDonald is fine, setting the tone for Camp Illyria as a slightly dim good-guy Orsino. As Toby, Jim Anderson has a fine, if not obnoxious bluster (though we'd definitely eye the meals we were served at this camp that he's cooking up), and has wonderful partners in criminal mischief in Malini Singh McDonald as Camp Secretary Maria,

Jubilee Figueroa as the often-stoned Junior Counselor Fabian, and Trey K. Blackburn as a fussy, germ-phobic Andrew Aguecheek. These characters, like many of the cast, emphasize the childish -- or perhaps childlike, on a good day -- qualities of the Illyrians created on the page by Shakespeare.

As Viola, Ayo Oneké Cummings has an easygoing, plucky spirit, one matched by her dreamier but bolder twin Sebastian, as played by Bryndon Cook. Their resemblance is close enough to work wonderfully, especially in their scenes with Tai Verley, a standout as the camp owner Olivia, who generates a lot of the energy in this production. And seeing Olivia and Viola both played by black women -- Black Henna deserves credit for the diversity onstage here -- creates the same kind of interesting perspective as when Malvolio's love for Olivia is frankly a lesbian girl-crush here.

The summer camp setting totally worked for us, as it preserved the fun -- although a very dark or a somber, melancholy Twelfth Night can be wonderful, it's not what you want to see in a park on a summer afternoon or early evening -- while providing some ironic commentary on some of the characters' self-importance (it's not clear whether Mike DeRosa's Assistant Athletic Counselor Curio is so attentive to his earbuds because he's getting important information for Orsino or listening to Franz Ferdinand or a Mets game]. We also liked the costumes by Deborah Erenberg, which seemed as if they came straight out of bug juice and smores heaven in the Poconos or near Bear Mountain.

We're grateful we got to spend some time this summer at Camp Illyria (without having to check into a bunk bed). Thanks to Black Henna Productions -- Malini Singh McDonald is executive director, Ian M. McDonald artistic director -- and everyone associated with this Twelfth Night, which we hope you can catch at the Forest Park Bandshell on July 15 at 4 p.m., back here in Williamsburg at East River State Park on July 16 at 6:30 p.m., Cherry Hill in Central Park on July 20 at 6 p.m. and on July 21 at 2 p.m. and up in The Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park on July 22 at 3 p.m.

Late Saturday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Black Henna Productions presents "Much Ado About Nothing" at McCarren Park

We had a Shakespeare-in-the-Brooklyn-Parks double header this afternoon, heading from Prospect Park's wonderful Julius Caesar to a delightfully wacky and surprisingly effective and affecting production of Much Ado About Nothing on the grass of McCarren Park.

The play, adapted and directed by Johnny Young, was presented by Black Henna Productions in an appropriately summery setting, Club Messina, a luxurious resort owned and operated by Leonato and his family. Audience members were given leis and the Hawaiian theme provided a great backdrop for the talented and comically adept cast.

Played on the grass between the dull, solid building that contains McCarren Park's filthy bathrooms and the Lorimer Street side near Nassau Evenue, it's a location that usually attracts sunbathers on summer weekend afternoons, and some of those already here, including one canoodling couple, stayed on for the show.

With the audience's beach blankets and picnic food (we got up during Act III and ran over to get lime ices from the nearby vendor, hardly missing a line), and even kids with big beach balls, the park setting was perfect for a Much Ado permeated with grass hula skirts, flowered shirts, drinks with little umbrellas. You could almost smell the suntan lotion in the air.

Although quite faithful to the text and plot of the play - unlike the recent New York Classical Theatre production, this one didn't eliminate the minor characters of Antonio (Cas Marino), Ursula (Regina Lim) and George Seacole (Ari Rivera) - this Much Ado About Nothing's resort milieu pretty much stripped characters like Leonato and Don Pedro of their gracious dignity, which proved rather refreshing.

The characters here seemed like regular people, none of them particularly attractive physically (not to insult the actors, who are perfectly pleasant-looking) and all of them at times imbued with a 21st-century American whiny petulance, a kind of hip-sitcom annoying nature that is really fun to watch in action.

The scheming, cellphone-distracted, predatory Don Joan (Dana Mazzenga) - Don John has been reimagined as a woman rather regularly - here is not as big a contrast with her good-time-Charlie brother Don Pedro (Isreal Scott), who's displaced her as CEO of AraGone Inc. (Aragon, get it?)

He's just a lot better-natured, keeps better company, and becomes friendlier when drunk on cocktails rather than meaner and more hostile and more manipulative.

For most of the play, the Friar (Drew Burke) sat among the audience under a beach umbrella on his own beach chair and blanket. Here reimagined as Club Messina's resident beach bum and spiritual guru, he shakes off his wasting-away-in-Margaritaville torpor to play his guitar and sing, offer some good advice, preside at weddings, and record the proceedings of the resort's inept security force, which under Dogberry (a very funny Ian McDonald) doubles as its lifeguards. The only lethal weapon the clueless Verges (Benjamin Thys) carries is his hair dryer.

The studied informality of this production worked nicely most of the time (on a few occasions, the actors stepped on each other's lines). Benedick (Jimmy O'Neill) and Beatrice (Amanda Doria) seem to have day-to-day responsibility for running the two corporations here for, respectively, Don Pedro and Beatrice's uncle Leonato (Kevin Schwab, nicely outfitted in a tropical-weight white suit, a soul patch and a sometimes-swinging golf club), and basically they're the most sensible characters at this beach resort - but they're not that sensible, although they're quick with insults (always pretty sensible, actually).

The play's most fortunate reinvention is making Antonio not Leonato's brother but his business partner and life partner. Cas Marino comes close to running away with the play in his portrayal of Antonio who's given to demurely adjusting his hot-pink dress at crucial moments. What's remarkable about Marino's performance is that he eschews easy laughs and broad comedy, and by the end there's the suggestion that he's the smartest one in the family.

Tim Robinson plays the sleaziest Borachio we've ever seen, but he's pretty well matched by Susan Erenberg's gum-chewing, rainbow-haired, headphoned Constance (as the "good twin" Margaret, she's more reserved but still slightly sleazy). With Mazzenga as Don Joan, their scenes are played fairly broadly, and their villainy is stupid enough to register as funny.

It was a relatively cool end for a very hot and humid July, but in the sun of the late afternoon, it was still a bit uncomfortable (we wished the cast had lent us some of the sunscreen they applied before the show began; the lei was nice, but the plastic around our neck made us hotter). Yet the audience stayed involved, including this little brother and sister. They couldn't possibly have understood a lot of what was going on, yet they were laughing regularly and seemed intently involved in the play.

Except for the funny chase scene by the Keystone Cops of Club Messina after the bad guys and the few characters who sat among us (notably the friar and Seacole and Dull, played by Mike Honda), the cast didn't wander into the audience. Working without scenery - although the hedges by the building in the back provided a good place for Benedick and Beatrice to listen in on conversations planned for their benefit - the action moved swiftly and we were surprised at how lucky they seemed to avoid the myriad distractions. (A momentary helicopter overhead, drowning out dialogue, was the worst offender, and that's nothing.)

As the ingenue couple whose marriage provides the MacGuffin for the comedy's goings-on (and the course of their on-again, off-again, pretending-to-be-dead, on-again romance doesn't really make sense except maybe as an alternate history for Romeo and Juliet), Melissa Meli as Hero

and Charley Layton as Claudio are jewels: very cute and sweet and even caring but, oh, are they stupid, each in their own way. But as with most of the characterization in this production, everything is just subtle enough to skirt ridiculousness.

We were afraid we might be a little too theater-weary for Much Ado in McCarren Park after coming from an earlier Shakespeare play, as well as an outdoor Cyrano last night, Medea the night before, and a play at Lincoln Center Out of Doors on Wednesday. But we weren't tired or bored for a minute at Black Henna Productions' performance.

Kudos to director Johnny Young, assistant director Malini Singh McDonald, stage manager Robert Babecki, costume designer Deborah Erenberg and everyone involved in bringing outdoor Shakespeare to Williamsburg and Greenpoint.