Through April 6
The Bard of Avon’s music-honoring, identity-mixing romantic satire, Twelfth Night, directed by Sara Bruner, closes the “Shakespeare requirement” for this Great Lakes Theater season.
The stark Twelfth Night stage includes layered wavy platforms designed by Courtney O’Neill that switch from seaside to estates with ease. Rick Martin’s lighting design enhances dramatic illusions, notably with water reflection effects that seemed so realistic that reason (which argued “nah, they can’t do that”) argued with vision at times.
Costume designer Mieka van der Ploeg’s vivid costumes were full of stripes (except for those of the twins who were garbed in semi-matching solid white with blue trim). The outfits, plus Caitie Martin’s wig and hair design, helped hold scenes together.
Delightful songs and sonic musings created by composer and sound designer Matthew Webb added essential elements to this Shakespeare play often honored for its focus on music. After all, it opens with Duke Orsino’s rambling lovesick whine that begins, “If music be the food of love, play on.”
It’s all too easy to get lost (somewhat like the characters) while watching Twelfth Night. It helps to be aware that since it’s a comedy, we can expect weddings. It also helps to see pairings, some romantic, others decidedly not, lead this tale of sometimes funny, sometimes less so, but always intricate, dance of love, identity and – quite simply —luck.
The ensembles that pivot dramatic (and romantic) action form three moving (and interactive) elements. Here, roughly in the order we meet them, are the various pairings.
Pair No. 1. After a shipwreck — shipwrecks must have been a huge factor in Shakespeare’s ocean-based London life — Viola (Grayson Heyl) and her fraternal twin Sebastian (Mick Scott Hermick) wash ashore (but not together, that would be too easy) and worry that the other has died. Heyl and Hermick, blonde, slim and in identical costumes, could indeed pass for fraternal twins. The attractive, sympathetic pair move into different worlds until drama’s end.
Pair No. 2. The self-absorbed nobility: The Duke, Orsino (Jeremy Gallardo) and Countess Olivia (Angela Utrera). Olivia wears morning garb and weeps a lot (partly to discourage the Duke who is determined they should wed). More about Olivia’s household in Pair No. 3 below.
As for the Duke’s attendants, we see Valentine (a clear-speaking Boe Wank) and Curio (Evan Stevens) fan about him. Of course, the Duke never listens to their good advice, and they do his bidding.
Pair No. 3. OK, there are more than two in this “pair,” but they are comic servants and low-level functionaries and so that’s all right. Olivia’s gentlewoman (aka servant) Maria (Jessie Cope Miller) enjoys a presence all her own as she jests with Feste (a tuneful Theo Allyn, Olivia’s household “fool,” who gets the best songs). Sir Toby Belch (a clear-speaking Dar’Jon Marquise Bentley), and Sir Andrew (James Alexander Rankin) complete the party.
Olivia’s steward, Malvolio (Joe Wegner) is not part of the “in” group in Olivia’s household, but he enjoys some of the best scenes — especially when he has a justified tantrum in response to malicious teasing. M. A. Taylor plays the priest in the final, obligatory wedding scene.
At times the words seemed garbled and that made the complicated story less funny than it might have been, but Shakespeare’s is not an easy language to follow today (though worth the effort it may be).
Bottom Line: An oft chaotic, sometimes amusing, mix of comedy, romance, mistaken identity, and general horseplay brought to you by Great Lakes Theater’s merry crew.
[Written by Laura Kennelly]
