Games People Play: Stratford's take on Twelfth Night is the most satisfying Shakespeare

Twelfth Night
Stratford Festival
The National Post

Back in the 1960s, there was a gently rocking musical based on Twelfth Night entitled Your Own Thing, which is a pretty fair translation of the original play's subtitle “What You Will”. More recently there was a Twelfth Night musical whose score was made up, attractively if for no other readily apparent reason, of Duke Ellington songs and that was called, in deference to Shakespeare's own opening line about the food of love, “Play On”. That line keeps resonating through Stratford's new Twelfth Night in which people, with good thematic cause, keep singing it. Des McAnuff's production, with a score by himself and Michael Roth, is virtually a musical itself, not unlike Your Own Thing in its cheerful eclecticism, aural and visual. I expected to find it, at most, a guilty pleasure. It turns out to be the best Shakespeare on the main Festival stage since Hamlet three years ago, and one of the most satisfying accounts of the play I've seen.

Shakespeare's romantic comedies are music soaked and music-driven anyway, like much of the greatest theatre since the Greeks; in fact, if you want to get historical about it, it's the non-musical drama that's the aberration.

McAnuff's also on authentically Shakespearean ground in opting for a mix of periods in set and costumes. In a program note, he calls this "postmodern," though I'd be more inclined to call it Pop Art, especially since this Duke Orsino seems to have engaged a Beatles cover band, Sergeant Pepper era, for his house musicians. (Or maybe he's rich enough to have hired the originals.)

There are two problems lying in wait for any staging of this play in modernish dress: Malvolio's crossgartering, and the sword fights. Both are brilliantly solved, the first through a lightning stroke it would be unfair to reveal, the second through some long-range planning. Olivia's household, as commandeered by Sir Toby Belch, resembles a sports compound; we see Toby and friends on the golf links, at the nets and in a sauna, so it's logical they should eventually get around to some fencing practice. These games are fun to watch in themselves; they're also used to point out the relationships of the people playing them. Which brings us to what's really memorable about this production. A cast made up of A-list actors is the norm at Stratford. What's less guaranteed is to find nearly all of them, right down to the First and Second Officers, giving A-list performances.

There are some excesses. Bringing on a spectral pop group (could this be the meaning of the term "ghostband"?) as back up for “O Mistress Mine” merely dilutes the rich chemistry that the scene's three designated characters have already established.

Sometimes, the music itself gets undercut. Ben Carlson sings a heartstopping first stanza of “Come Away, Death”; he sings a heart-stopping second stanza, too, but we're distracted by the appearance of an emblematic lover and lass striking illustrative poses.

Debra Hanson's costumes are spiffy, but the meaning of her basic set, a high and yawning maw, escapes me. Still, much of what happens beneath or before it is lovely, notably the arrival of Suzy Jane Hunt's shipwrecked Viola by rowboat through a sea of dry ice, as if cruising the catacombs of The Phantom of the Opera. Her "what country, friends, is this?" sounds the authentic note of wonder (and Timothy D. Stickney's answering sea captain maintains it); later on she's better at being heartsick than at being witty or commanding. She has, though, two ideal opposites. Mike Shara, taking a quantum leap as a Shakespearean actor, is a magnetic Orsino, luxuriating in romantic self torture and, when thwarted, darkly prepared to torture others. Sara Topham's Olivia is a delightful poseuse, half aware of her own absurdity and with strong reserves of feeling just waiting to be aroused. She also establishes firm relationships, vexed or affectionate or both, with everyone under her roof.

That would include Carlson's Feste, the production's master of ceremonies: a sardonic loner with professional worries, scoring points off everybody with whom he comes in contact and mining fool's gold from the most recalcitrant lines. This textual and psychological nimbleness is a feature of the below-stairs scenes, with Brian Dennehy a gentleman sharper of a Toby who waits long (possibly too long) before baring his fangs, and Stephen Ouimette an ecstatic Sir Andrew, less vulnerably winsome than we're accustomed to (and than when Ouimette himself last played the role), but still endearing. It's telling that when Olivia says "let him be looked to," it's the hapless Andrew she means, not the drunken uncle of whom she's obviously washed her hands.

There's a strong hint that her exaggerated mourning is controlled by Tom Rooney's Malvolio, a discreetly officious steward whose letter scene almost crowns the play, showing us self-seduction by easy stages. In his later torments, this outstandingly inventive and economical actor walks a very fine line, unlikeable but sympathetic.

Juan Chioran makes an exceptional deal of the notoriously nondescript Fabian, here an apprentice majordomo who briefly perks up in song, perhaps due more to the actor's proclivities than the character's. Shane Carty and Michael Blake likewise do more than usual for Sebastian and Antonio.

The general busyness, including a cage on pulleys for Malvolio, sometimes threatens to swamp the play, but there's always, especially towards the end, a sharp moment to pull everything together. The bated-breath reunion of Viola and her brother; the last mutually vengeful encounter of Feste and Malvolio, their masks off; the final song, that's almost an epiphany. Our last sight of Rooney is an unlooked-for stunner; he'll be revenged on the whole pack of them.