Twelfth Night (review)

As patrons entered the cozy, turn-of-the-century Cumston Hall and awaited the start of this clever and entertaining Twelfth Night, a brightly lighted and curiously adorned set lay before them: movie camera, director's chair, clapboard, as well as several other movie-making devices, all haphazardly situated underneath a curtain that read "Illyria Studios, Ltd." Each prop helped to set this production in Hollywood during the late 1920s or early '30s, the period of movie making that not only killed vaudeville but also imposed upon the industry headlong changes in acting styles, production, and direction.

Director Janis Stevens, set designer Dan Bilodeau, and costume designer Jonna Klaiber concertedly immersed their Twelfth Night in this era's film studio setting, and thus foregrounded the play's multifarious explorations of transformation and flux. The sudden shift in audience preference for silent pictures over vaudeville, for instance, and then for talkies over the pictures, reverberated in the several speedy personal transformations that occurred throughout the play, nearly always without any opportunity for characters to reflect upon their transfigured states.

Feste (played superbly by Paul L. Coffey) directed the audience's attention to this theme during the production's opening moments. He

The poster for the Theater at Monmouth's 2009 production of Twelfth Night, directed by Janis Stevens. Photo provided by David Greenham.

stumbled onto the stage silently, dressed in a manner befitting a struggling vaudevillian: frayed boater hat and mismatched butcherblock-striped shirt, bow tie, and striped waistcoat. Reminiscent, of course, of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and others who navigated, with varying degrees of success, the labyrinthine voyage from vaudeville to silent films to voice-tracked movies, Feste nervously surveyed the film-related props strewn before him, grabbed a bullhorn, inspected it thoughtfully, and then mumbled through it—hesitantly at first but then more confidently. As his guise, posture, and demeanor became that of a film director, music arose with a startling flourish, actors stormed the stage from both wings, and a song-and-dance routine materialized out of nowhere. The transformation from stage to screen was effected, then, with nary a pause or seam.

Charmingly played by Alecia White, Viola drew even more attention to the frenzied rapidity surrounding one's personal transformation. Despite washing violently onto Illyria's shore, facing the near certainty of her twin brother Sebastian's death, assuming a male identity as Cesario, and falling in love with Duke Orsino (masterfully portrayed by Dan Olmstead)—all in the first few scenes, White's Viola accepted each potentially staggering development without a slip. Not until well into act two, in fact, did she pause to consider just how convoluted her situation had become: "O time, thou must untangle this, not I. / It is too hard a knot for me t'untie."

Only Olivia, who succumbed just as instantly to the stranger Cesario's assertiveness as Viola fell for Orsino's eloquence, acknowledged the alacrity with which transformation occurs: "Even so quickly may one catch the plague?" Jennifer Weinreich virtually stole the show with her portrayal of the bereaved countess, and did so by emphasizing the emotionally liberating possibilities inherent in her transformation from mourner to pursuer. As expected, Olivia first took the stage dressed completely in black, including the veil drawn across her face. Not much time passed, though, before the audience observed how stiflingly Olivia's habiliments of mourning restricted an otherwise natural inclination toward mirth. When...