Review of the National Players' production of Twelfth Night

I had the pleasure of seeing the National Players perform Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke on April 1, 2008. Jennifer gives an excellent encapsulation of the play, so I won't go into the particulars of the story here. (I brushed up on the play - to which my only exposure was the final scene of Shakespeare in Love - by reviewing the Wikipedia entry. Not a perfect or even a good solution, but in retrospect the entry seems to have been fairly accurate.)

The play was staged in a lecture hall in the school's Educational Conference Center. The stage entrances doubled as the exits to the room, and were blocked off by black curtains. As the audience entered the room they walked past a table filled with the makeshift props that would be used in the play. The cast, who had mingled with the audience in the hallway outside the lecture hall before the room was opened up, took the stage in darkness; when the lights came up, they were shown to be dressed identically in white T-shirts and khakis, and looked about themselves bewilderedly. A conveniently located garment rack provided costumes, which to my eyes appeared to be primarily in a late eighteenth-century style. Some were complete and elaborate, some were simple, and some were, as with the props, decidedly makeshift - intentionally so, as Jennifer explains, in keeping with the theme of the play.

More than costumes and props, it is the cast that makes the play, and this cast did a wonderful job of bringing Shakespeare to a modern audience.

Orsino, played by Bill Army, is something of a cipher: a lovestruck nobleman who never seems to rise above a passionless, almost emotionless equanimity - save for a shockingly vicious decision at the end of the play that is expressed with such casual coolness that it comes across as all the more horrifying.

Sarah M. Johnson performed the role of Viola/Cesario. She quite convincingly inhabited the role of the young woman in disguise as a young man, and hit all of the right notes for presenting an attitude and bearing that accidentally won the heart of the mourning Olivia.

Madeleine Russell instilled her Olivia with a snideness that brought new edge to Shakespeare's words. Her Olivia seemed as much in isolation as a result of being disgusted with the male suitors who sought her hand as for her stated reason of being in mourning for the passing of her brother. Her icy exterior was melted by her admiration, and later adoration, of the dashing, relentless, and fearless Cesario - Viola in disguise, acting only to ply Orsinio's troth in his stead.

The night was stolen by the actors portraying the secondary characters. Ryan Mitchell as the drunken and boisterous Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's uncle, and David Frankenberger, Jr. as the braggart, dandy and fool Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a would-be suitor of Olivia (or any other woman, for that matter) who is being depleted of funds by the libertine Belch, gave performances that were not simply over the top, but went down the side, around the back, and back under the bottom again. When the two jolly topers meet with Feste the Fool (or Clown, as he is listed in this version of the play), Shakespeare writes the scene thusly:

SIR ANDREW
Excellent! why, this is the best fooling, when all
is done. Now, a song.

SIR TOBY BELCH
Come on; there is sixpence for you: let's have a song.

SIR ANDREW
There's a testril of me too: if one knight give a--

Clown
Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?

SIR TOBY BELCH
A love-song, a love-song.

SIR ANDREW
Ay, ay: I care not for good life.

Mitchell delivered the line as "A LOVE SONG! A LOVE SONG!!!!" with Toby Belch in such a drunken furor that he seemed about ready to knock Sir Andrew Aguecheek's cockeyed hat right off his head. Jeremy Larson's Feste, who is less of a fool than many of the characters in the story, was played to fine effect, invigorated by Larson' skills with the guitar and vocals.

Since this trio lacked sufficient wit to do much more than engage in songfests and drunken revelry, wit was supplied to them from without by the beautiful and cunning Maria, one of Olivia's women, played by Kieran Welsh-Phillips (who also doubles as the tour's Music Director.)

Maria hatches a plot to undo Olivia's Puritanical steward, Malvolio, played by Cory Cunningham. Cunningham's Malvolio is every bit as preposterously wonderful as Mitchell's Toby Belch or Frankenberger's Andrew Aguecheek, though his performance is all the more remarkable because of the level of restraint his character must display - at first. The revelation of the full extent of his "cross-gartered" state made me wonder where he got a pair of breakaway pantaloons.

Rounding out the cast are Benjamin S. Kingsland, who played Orsinio's man Curio and various other roles; Branda Lock as Olivia's other Lady in Waiting, devoid of lines but not of charm; Scott Zenreich as Viola's identical fraternal twin Sebastian - both of these actors resembled each other closely enough to make this conceit believable; and Wilkes University alumnus Dan Van Why as the hapless and loyal Antonio, who steals much of the final scene with his confused and bewildered expressions wordlessly delivered while he is tied to a chair. When he finally breaks his silence by posing this question to Sebastian and his lookalike sister Viola...

How have you made division of yourself?

...his delivery darn near brought down the house.

As we exited the lecture hall I commented to my friend that this seemed like a lot of effort to put into a single performance. But it was true, and many of this tour's performances are one-night stands. To make things even more hectic, the same tour group is also putting on a presentation of Jack London's The Call of the Wild! The remaining schedule:

4/1/08 Nanticoke, PA Twelfth Night
4/4/08 Florence, SC Twelfth Night
4/5/08 Florence, SC Call of the Wild
4/9/08 Columbia, TN Twelfth Night
4/14/08 Yankton, SD Twelfth Night
4/15/08 Yankton, SD Call of the Wild/Twelfth Night
4/19/08 Cheboygan, MI Call of the Wild
4/22/08 Kirksville, MO Twelfth Night
4/26/08 Sandwich, IL Twelfth Night
4/29/08 Towanda, PA Call of the Wild
5/1/08 Washington, DC Twelfth Night

If you have an opportunity to see this tour, do so! It will be time and money well spent.