Twelfth Night (Play)

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    My Midsummer Dream: 7 Plays, 5 Days, 4 Stages, 1 Story

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    At the Stratford Festival, a remix of genders and genres tells a brand-new, age-old tale of personal freedom.Walking the streets of this almost-too-charming town along the I-kid-you-not Avon River, I’ve often had the experience of hearing voices in my head.I am but mad north-northwest, as Hamlet would have it. After all, at the Stratford Festival, 400 miles in that direction from my usual haunts, internal voices are utterly normal, the result of seeing, cheek by jowl, so many new productions. After you see two or three, they start a conversation, sometimes delighting in what they have in common and sometimes arguing about what they don’t.During a visit in July, those voices were louder than ever. The five plays and two musicals I caught in five days on four stages were not just conversing but collaborating, seeming to scribble in one another’s scripts. “Twelfth Night” wrote part of “La Cage aux Folles.” “Something Rotten” cribbed “Romeo and Juliet.” “Hedda Gabler” and “The Goat” drank from the same bloody fountain.And “Cymbeline”? Well, that little-loved Shakespeare once again proved to be mad on its own.The clash and coupling of such seemingly different works is the great value, and great pleasure, of the repertory system, one so difficult to sustain that few theaters bother anymore. Stratford is by every measure — budget, employment, attendance, production — the largest repertory theater in North America, and likely the largest nonprofit theater, period.Also the broadest. Where else could you take in so easily a program so diverse, by genre, era, style and origin? Indeed, if you hit the right part of the season, which this year began on April 16 and runs through Nov. 17, you could theoretically see all 12 shows in one week.That efficiency wouldn’t matter unless the shows were good; in some years, that’s all they are, and that’s enough. But this year, both in scope and quality, Stratford outdid itself, with a thrilling “Goat” and “Gabler,” a delightful “Cage” and “Rotten” and a scintillating “Twelfth Night.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: In ‘Malvolio,’ Hope (and a Title Role) for a Damaged Heart

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      The Classical Theater of Harlem follows up last year’s winning “Twelfth Night” with a sequel that feels like a sweet summer frolic.Poor old Malvolio. Amid the comic romance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” he is the imperious steward who gets cruelly pranked for sport, duped by a band of smart alecks who forge a love letter seemingly addressed to him.Believing that the missive is from the countess he adores, and thinking he is following her wishes, he dresses garishly in yellow stockings with cross-garters and behaves as if he’s come unhinged. Then he is locked away in darkness, where his tormentors continue to mess with his mind.It’s a rancid kind of meanness, but the playwright Betty Shamieh has turned it into a hero’s origin story with her clever, winking new play “Malvolio.” And the Classical Theater of Harlem, whose “Twelfth Night” last July was an effervescent delight, has fashioned this sequel into a sweet summer frolic, with the sympathetic Allen Gilmore reprising what is now the title role.Twenty years after the end of “Twelfth Night,” Malvolio is long gone from the island of Illyria. A respected military general in a stubborn war, he is the leader of the Legion of the Cross-Gartered. (Fabulous name, that; fun uniforms, too, by Celeste Jennings.) But his past mistreatment festers in him.“My humiliation made me reckless,” he says. “Reckless men make great soldiers.”The fleet-footed production, featuring a very funny John-Andrew Morrison, center, as a bored king, is now at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park.Richard TermineIn Ian Belknap and Ty Jones’s fleet-footed production at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, most of the old gang from “Twelfth Night” is still back on Illyria, living not so happily ever after. The marriage of Viola (Perri Gaffney) and Orsino (René Thornton Jr.) totters on despite his infidelity — and his preference for seeing her disguised as a boy, as she was when he fell in love with her.It’s Volina (Kineta Kunutu), their strong-minded daughter, who takes up the mantle of romance and adventure. Betrothed against her wishes to Prince Furtado (J.D. Mollison) — a misogynistic nitwit and sole heir to the uber-bored King Chadlio (John-Andrew Morrison, so funny that you will root for the king to survive various attempts on his life) — Volina slips out of Illyria and meets Malvolio by chance. She falls instantly, persuasively in love with him.Critical of war, skeptical of marriage and astute about the warping effect of defining oneself through trauma, “Malvolio” regards its characters from a distinctly female point of view. Paying close attention to the women, Shamieh has fun with callbacks to assorted Shakespeare plays; Volina’s nurse (Marjorie Johnson) was once Juliet’s.With a color palette that pops, and choreography (by Dell Howlett) that does, too, this is a visually and aurally enticing production. (The set is by Christopher and Justin Swader, lighting by Alan C. Edwards, video by Zavier Augustus Lee Taylor and music by Frederick Kennedy.) If the characters’ tangled relationships are a bit complex for the uninitiated, that’s also true in “Twelfth Night.” The big picture here is perfectly clear.Does Malvolio have enough hope in his damaged heart to risk loving Volina back? Will she even be free to choose him if he does? Well, it is a comedy — with last-minute reveals that are entirely in the spirit of Shakespeare, and utterly charming.It’s free, by the way. Treat yourself.MalvolioThrough July 29 at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      ‘Twelfth Night’ Review: A Shot of Joy Under a Darkening Sky

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      At an uptown amphitheater, the Classical Theater of Harlem stages Shakespeare’s comedy with fizzy delight.For so many of us, stress roared in and put down roots. The stress of living at perpetual high alert in a world that has seemed, for the past several years, to be in an ever-shifting state of emergency. Amid all that, in the post-shutdown theater, has come a tsunami of shows dedicated to elucidating social ills and processing cultural pain. Such work is vital now and always; don’t get me wrong.But we desperately require its counterweight, too — shows that usher us into alternate worlds where we can give ourselves over to pure delight. The Classical Theater of Harlem gets that, deeply, and proves it with a delectable “Twelfth Night” so fizzy and fun that you may be surprised afterward at how relaxed your body is, and how much lighter your spirit feels.That’s what communal joy can do. Maybe it’s been a while?Hie thee, then, to the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, where this free, outdoor production directed by Carl Cofield boasts dance as lissome as ever, design that raises the bar on this company’s customary visual wow and a cast whose ease brings a lovely clarity. In Kara Young as Viola, this “Twelfth Night” also has a star as fascinatingly natural in Shakespeare as she has been in any of the contemporary stage roles that have established her as one of New York’s most exciting actors.Washed up on the shore of Illyria, her Viola is immediately surprising — shivery and traumatized, which makes the unseen shipwreck that tore her from her brother, Sebastian, more than a mere plot device to set in motion a rom-com with a mistaken-identity twist. Not that she lingers in her distress; this show gets playful fast. But the emotional stakes are laid, and they will pay off.Needing to survive in this strange country, Viola disguises herself as a young man named Cesario and gets a job working for Orsino (William DeMeritt), a love-struck duke who sends her to plead his amorous case with the countess Olivia (Christina Sajous). The elegant lady spurns Orsino’s messages but is much taken with the messenger, who, in turn, is so smitten with the oblivious duke that she can barely stand to be near him. It’s a triangle of sexual tension, one of romantic comedy’s most deliciously tormented shapes.An intersecting plot involves Shakespeare’s possibly most stellar team of ridiculous idiots: the ever-reveling Sir Toby Belch (Chivas Michael) and his tag-along friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek (an excellently goofy Carson Elrod), who with their raucous compadres stir up trouble for trouble’s sake at Olivia’s house. Their principal target is Olivia’s prim steward, Malvolio (Allen Gilmore), who, despite his name, is not a bad guy, really; he’d just like to get some sleep instead of being kept awake by these cases of arrested development.This beautiful show, at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, works its magic beneath the summer sky as dusk turns to dark.Richard TermineCofield and his creative team are gorgeously in sync as they fully embrace all comic opportunities — not least a memorably silly sword fight between Viola and Andrew, both of them terrified and armed with quasi-light sabers. (Fight direction is by the father-and-son team Rick Sordelet and Christian Kelly-Sordelet.) There is also the laugh-out-loud tableau of Toby, Andrew and the servant Fabian (Donathan Walters) popping their hatted heads up from their hiding place to watch Malvolio fall into their trap. (Set design is by Riw Rakkulchon, costumes by Mika Eubanks and lighting by Alan C. Edwards.)What befalls Malvolio is the one indelible blot on Shakespeare’s play: recreational cruelty that can’t be jollied away. In this production, though, the rest is lively, witty, fresh — and peppered with crowd-pleasing songs performed by Olivia’s scooter-riding jester, Feste (Israel Erron Ford) — in one instance, with Toby and Andrew as backup dancers. (The original music is by Frederick Kennedy, who also did the sound design; choreography is by company regular Tiffany Rea-Fisher.)As with any oft-told tale, the enjoyment of “Twelfth Night” lies not so much in the destination as in the journey. We know that Sebastian (J’Laney Allen) will turn up, that people will confuse him and Viola — the show’s hair designer, Earon Nealey, is instrumental in this illusion — and that it will all end happily with the romantic triangle squared.This is one of those productions that make you feel lucky to be in New York. You have not seen a Viola like Young’s fierce, funny, fully inhabited Viola. And if your nerves are as frayed as so many of ours are, you could do with the beautiful balm that is this show, working its magic beneath the summer sky as dusk turns to dark.Twelfth NightThrough July 29 at the Richard Rodgers Ampitheater at Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More