Anne Hathaway was inevitable casting for Viola in this Public Theater version of Twelfth Night , and not just because she bears the name of Shakespeare's wife. Daniel Sullivan's production has a Regency look and feel, and Hathaway has shown that she is at home in the period: she played Miss Austen in Becoming Jane .

The evening also requires a Viola who can sing, which Hathaway did not only with Hugh Jackman at this year's Oscars but also in a fondly remembered New York production of the musical Carnival . Her trilling fits in especially well here, because the Public's Central Park stage, the Delacorte, is as awash in music as it has been in rain during New York's soggy June.