If you go to the Globe Theater in London to watch Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, you will surely see a production in which the high comedy characters conduct themselves with stylish aplomb. Refined accents and restrained movements will be on parade. The levels of class will remain firmly in order, and you will be enchanted by the characters’ delicacy of behavior, no matter how silly, even as you guffaw at the preposterous capers of the low-comedy characters.
Not necessarily so in the US of A. After all, wasn’t the Revolution largely about throwing off the strictly imposed caste system of the English monarchy? And thus we can attend a production like that of the Marin Shakespeare Company’s Twelfth Night, which opened last week in the summer-struck outdoor setting of the Forest Meadows Amphitheater on the Dominican College campus.
In Director Lesley Schisgall Currier’s production all players are equally wacky, equally prone to slapstick collapses onto the floor. High and low comedy characters each reel to his or her own idiosyncratic and goofy drum. But that’s all one, because truly they strive to please us every day, and the production is nothing if not fun.
Building on Shakespeare’s brilliant play of lost siblings and gender-bending disguises and the havoc they create in the inevitable trials of love, the cast takes a no-holds-barred approach to comic portrayal. Duke Orsino (Dean Linnard) is not just languishing from unrequited love, he can barely get off his couch, or even the floor. Countess Olivia (Kathryn Smith-McGlynn) doesn’t just delicately pursue Viola disguised as a boy, she runs after her/him, applying the strategies of a seasoned football player. Antonio (Braedyn Youngberg), the sea captain who saves Sebastian’s life, doesn’t just love Viola’s brother, he lusts openly after him.
And of course, the hard-drinking, dissolute rascals meant to provide the comic relief to the play’s traditionally deluded and love-besotted aristocratic characters continue on, spinning flax between their knees and bringing their hands to the buttery bar in raucous hilarity. Daren Kelly, who plays Sir Toby Belch, appears utterly comfortable in the role of Olivia’s conniving uncle, who is milking both his niece for her hospitality and Sir Andrew Aguecheek for his ready cash. Michael J. Hume does a terrific Sir Andrew, distracted, drunken and susceptible to any impish plot that the servant Maria (Mary Baird) might devise to undermine Olivia’s ambitious and preening steward, Malvolio (John Abbot Gardiner).
At the top of the list of roles an actor would murder to play is one of Shakepeare’s great comic fools, Feste. Jeremy Vik moves assuredly in this character, adding his multiple talents not only as a singer but also as a juggler and tumbler. While reciting his lines, he constructs a pyramid of chairs on top of which he balances in a handstand. Creating one of the few times that, while watching Shakespeare, I had no idea what was being said. I was too focused on watching Vik stacking rickety-looking chairs, and wondering what he might do once he had built his pyramid. Plus, Vik has very shapely legs in tights, well worth contemplating.
The production was set in about the time of Renaissance Europe, wavering between an English and an Ilyrian setting, which could be simply described as a sea town. The men sported jerkins and hose, and of course the inevitable cod piece, padded to enormous dimensions and decorated richly. Abra Berman did costumes and Jackson Currier the simple and charming painted sets. Lighting was by David Lam.
– Jaime Robles
Photo: Sir Toby Belch (Daren Kelly) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Michael J. Hume) cheer on the fool Feste (Jeremy Vik) in the Marin Shakespeare Company’s production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”.