Abstract
The first joint venture between Boston’s classic Lyric Stage Company and the Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Twelfth Night treads water carefully. Opening with the stylish cast dancing aboard the deck of a Titanic-era ocean liner, the ensemble suddenly lurches in choreographed unison to the motion of the swelling waves that herald their shipwreck. Floor-to-ceiling blue chiffon curtains upstage (scenic design by Jenna McFarland Lord) create the shipboard atmosphere and double effectively as translucent sea waves, entangling and nearly drowning Viola (Hayley Spivey). She arrives onshore still clad in her Downtown Abbey-esque flapper dress and shoes, her cheery spirit as undampened as her clothes, which she changes for a natty tan suit, beige waistcoat and bow-tie, and a newsboy cap (costume design by Chelsea Kerl) to join Orsino’s service – this seems to involve predominantly swilling drinks served up by Valentine/Curio (Michael Forden Walker), a butler who doubles as an attentive home barman. When Orsino (Alejandro Simoes) surfeits quickly on his musical entertainment, his manservant pulls the cord to a working jukebox.
As the scene shifts between Orsino’s and Olivia’s homes, the rolling grillwork gates, ochre-stucco walls, wrought balconies at either side of the stage, and window shutters reveal we are in New Orleans rather than a Mediterranean coast, a fitting musical backdrop for the play’s many songs and festival atmosphere. Part louche, Poirot-lookalike, and part pencil-mustachioed carnival barker in a loud multicolour checked suit and bowler hat, Sir Toby (Bobbie Steinbach) has a diminutive stature that clashes comically with Olivia’s apparently typecast ‘giant’ Maria (Jennie Israel) during the 1.3 ‘buttery bar’ witticisms. Sympathetically inept Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Simoes again) also sports a pink-checked jacket, bowler, and a very askew tie. Rounding out the trio as one of the most irrepressible Festes to walk the stage, Rachel Belleman relishes the role. Channelling half gallows-humour Weimar cabaret diva, half Ella Fitzgerald songstress, she belts out tunes beside the jukebox with an admirable set of lungs or serenades us with a ukelele. Already a prominent feature of the play, music is used ingeniously at various points – Cesario and Sir Andrew’s ‘duel’ is styled as a boxing match watched by the audience as if it were a silent film replete with a speeded-up score (sound design by David Wilson). The action halts momentarily as Sir Andrew dashes out apologetically to pee.
Olivia (Samantha Richert) reclines on a velvet divan in a bathrobe and applies an ice-bag to her marcelled head, though it is unclear whether Feste or Orsino has given her a headache. She and the staid Malvolio (Richard Snee), resplendent in his pinstripes and double-breasted morning coat, look like they are in a different era as Toby caterwauls an improptu ‘Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you’ before accosting an audience member. Blasoning herself without a trace of irony in the ‘willow cabin’ scene, Olivia is genuinely pleasantly surprised to discover ‘so quickly may one catch the plague’ (1.5.284) upon her entertainment of Cesario, which seems to rouse her from a premature ageing. Later she hops up nimbly onto a park bench to proclaim her love for Cesario, much to his evident anxiety.
The often-hilarious physical comedy of the box-tree scene is played for maximum absurdity, with the stout Toby hiding behind a small sapling in a planter and the bright scarlet-jacketed Fabian (Walker, in a straw boater) highly visible from behind the small wheeled grilles they move around as cover; Malvolio barely registers that the set is shifting around him with nearly every step. He delightedly shows an audience member Olivia’s ‘Lucrece’ seal, and after an extended, truly heroic effort to ‘crush this’ not ‘a little’ (4.3.132) and sound out all the possible permutations of ‘MOAI’, he shakes another’s hand in self-congratulation. Fabian falls prostate on the ground at Maria’s feet and fans himself in admiration for her gulling triumph. After the interval and some Mardi Gras music, Malvolio lolls his yellow-gartered leg seductively over a balcony. Dropping his braces to reveal his banana-yellow boxer pants, he shuffles about the stage in pursuit of Olivia with his trousers about his ankles. Hamming it up, Fabian, Toby, and Maria shake a bible, crucifix, and holy water at him, and the operatic ‘curate’ Feste visits Malvolio in jail, a simple lighting effect creating bar-like shadows where he sits beneath one of the wrought balconies (lighting design by Deb Sullivan).
While Spivey is androgynous enough a Viola to persuade us easily that she is Cesario, even with the proposed restoration of her ‘woman’s weeds’ (5.1.268), director Plum does not take risks with the comedy’s playfulness with gender or inchoate sexualities so exploited by other productions – Olivia and Orsino tug at each of Cesario’s arms but this is the only struggle. With her more declamatory style, Spivey’s skill lies in unpacking her lines with ease, but her Cesario makes it clear that Orsino alone is the man. If Orsino’s professed love for Olivia seems unconvincing, the sexual tension between him and Cesario is similarly muted, with Orsino simply mildly relieved to discover he can pursue his page. Only Feste’s teasingly suggestive manner conveys eroticism and hints at a fluidity of gender in the cast, and earlier it is she who pushes Orsino and Cesario together into a kiss they spring away from, but even this is more in jest than in earnest.
The ‘straight’-laced production makes Antonio (Walker again), with his intensity of ‘desire / (More sharp than filèd steel)’ (3.3.4–5) for the unwitting Sebastian (Dominic Carter), seem as though he has walked onstage from a different play next door. Even if both he and Malvolio are ultimately unrecuperated by the comedy, Malvolio’s stunned reaction to the revelation of his gulling and proclamation of revenge prefaces the change in mood as a sonorous brass band begins to play and the cast pairs up for a final dance. Pulling the blue chiffon curtains closed again, Malvolio gets his revenge, returning us to the sombre, watery setting where the female actors gather to sing ‘it raineth every day’.