Dancing Between Battles
Lily Rabe in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ in Central Park

Fair weather never lasts forever, not even in the Eden-like patch of Sicily that has popped up in Central Park. That’s the setting for Jack O’Brien’s pleasure-filled production of Much Ado About Nothing, which opened on Monday night at the Delacorte Theater. Though skies and temperaments are sunny when the show begins, you’re always conscious of brooding storms waiting to make their angry entrances. This being Shakespeare in the Park, where everyone is at the mercy of the elements, such apprehension operates on two levels. The night I caught this Much Ado — which confirms the reputation of its leading lady, Lily Rabe, as one of our sharpest and most spirited young interpreters of Shakespeare — the rains came. They copiously watered the cast and the audience, as well as the fruitful gardens that are part of John Lee Beatty’s summertime idyll of a set. Yet, if anything, the showers only enhanced the show’s holiday spirit, as well as the play’s suggestion that bright horizons often teasingly recede as we pursue them.