Twelfth Night

I reread the play as I'll be appearing in it this summer as Sir Toby Belch. Ah, what fun!

Shakespeare fact: most directors these days cut Shakespeare's plays down to a reasonable two hours for performance. That will be the case for the production I'm in. I'll miss the double-talk conversations between Sir Toby and the Clown, and some of the "mistaken identity" humor involving male/female twins Sebastian and Viola. Although I can see why the director removed this stuff. In the former case, the invented references to phony experts like "Qeuebus" (God, would I have loved saying "Qeuebus"!) would have been indistinguishable from other archaic references, thereby causing confusion to the average theater goer. In the latter case, the humorous situations are often repetitive.


Cutting Shakespeare is nothing new. David Garrick, an actor and director who was a friend of Samuel Johnson, used to do it routinely in the 18th century. ( )

I was in a Shakespeare course in London, so I had the chance to revisit this play. The Nigel Hawthorne/Ben Kingsley/Toby Stephens film version has long been a favorite of mine, but the play itself is even better! (I also saw a lovely production while in London, which certainly helped.) One of my favorite Shakespeare plays. (Jan 2010) ( )

cover

Critically acclaimed as one of Shakespeare's most complex and intriguing plays, 'Twelfth Night' is a classic romantic comedy of mistaken identities. This book explores the factors that make up the play's textual, theatrical, critical and cultural history. It surveys the play's production and reception and emphasizes the role of the spectator.

One of Shakespeare's finest comedies, Twelfth Night, was written at the same time as Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida, and while it shares their fascination with sex, death and confused identities, its exuberant comedy and linguistic inventiveness rises above the introspection of these plays. Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated in a storm that washes them both up at different points on the shores of Illyria. Believing each other to be dead, both attempt to survive by using their wits. Viola cross-dresses and enters the service of the lovesick Orsino, in love with Olivia, an heiress in mourning for the loss of her brother. Orsino's saucy young page Cesario (Viola) soon falls in love with "his" master, who tells "him", "all is semblative a woman's part". Unfortunately, while Viola falls in love with Orsino, Olivia falls in love with her alter ego, Cesario, while also being pursued at the same time by her pompous servant Malvolio. Olivia's house is also turned upside down by the antics of her drunker uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and the whole crazy situation reaches boiling point when Sebastian reappears. Despite the madcap plot, Twelfth Night remains one of Shakespeare's most complex and inventive comedies, fascinated with questions of cross-dressing, gender confusion, language and inversion, as well as retaining a darker edge to some of its laughter. --Jerry Brotton