Shakespeare in the Park draws a starry crowd to opening

Play on!

The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park made a dramatic return Thursday night, reopening the iconic Delacorte Theater in Central Park after an $85 million facelift.

Lupita Nyong’o, Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson led an all-star cast of “Twelfth Night,” wowing audience members including Ben Platt, Billy Crudup, Marcia Gay Harden, Rachel Dratch, and “Gilded Age” star Morgan Spector.

The theater, first built in 1962, recently underwent an 18-month renovation with architect Stephen Chu modernizing backstage areas and covering the outside with wood from the city’s water towers.

Oskar Eustis, the Public’s Artistic Director, welcomed guests back, giving a speech about the similarities between art and democracy.

“The theater postulates that the only way you find the truth is the conflict between different points of view,” he told the crowd. “And that’s what democracy postulates, too. The theater postulates that if you’re going to be an audience in the theater, you have to practice empathizing, not just with one point of view, but with different points of view. That is actually an exercise in democracy.”

He continued, “In this time, when we have so many people claiming that they know the truth and that they’re trying to win over everybody else, at a time when there are so many people who are alone in front of their computers, certain that their solitary point of view is the thing that’s got to win, when we are breaking down our commonality: we need the theater more than ever. And we need the theater to be free.”

After the performance, guests like Jim Parsons, “The Better Sister” actress Lorraine Toussaint, and Jackie Hoffman, headed to a party right outside the theater to celebrate with the show’s stars like Moses Sumney and Junior Nyong’o, Lupita’s real-life brother who plays her twin in the play.

The Delacorte’s Shakespeare program — started by the Public’s founder Joseph Papp — has offered up free tickets to more than 6 million people over the course of 150 productions, according to its web site.