Twelfth Night (or What You Will) (review)

Ten Thousand Things' all-female Twelfth Night was 2008's companion-piece to its earlier all-male Richard III. Director Michelle Hensley saw a rare opportunity for many women to exercise their comic talents together in a Shakespeare play, as opposed to being among the two or three female characters. The production has stuck with me because some of the best actresses in the Twin Cities played parts either against gender type or completely unavailable to them in conventional casting.

In TTT fashion, Twelfth Night proceeded with the lights up, the audience arranged in the round on movable chairs with spaces, live music and sound by Peter Vitale, and proximity between audience and actors. The players capitalized on this intimacy: a couple of empty seats in the front rows allowed performers to sit and "chat" with the audience as the text afforded opportunity, most notably in Viola's "I am the man" soliloquy. Malvolio, too, discussed his letter with several onlookers.

Staging was simple: the Orsino and Olivia households were identified by color—rose and pink for the latter and blue and lavender for the former. Light-blue and navy-blue jackets distinguished Viola/Cesario and Sebastian, both played by the imposing Kate Eifrig, whose deep voice also contrasted with typically boyish Violas. Interestingly, the casting of African-American actors to play Olivia and Toby implied little beyond kinship and thus hardly seemed to "signify" as nontraditional, especially in this all-female staging.

Strong performances by Isabell Monk O'Connor as Toby and Barbara Kingsley as Malvolio meant that the comic chaos of Olivia's household dominated Hensley's production. Whether taking a pee behind the audience or telling Malvolio to "sneck up," Monk O'Connor revealed the man behind the swaggerer's bravado. In contrast, Kingsley's aging, thoroughly self-absorbed Malvolio exposed the vulnerability behind the steward's self-regard. Neither the conniving, drunken, boisterous Toby nor the self-loving, vain Malvolio were novel interpretations, but in this intimate setting, they represented vividly the competition for precedence in Olivia's household—and hence the risks too for Maria's throwing in with Toby against Malvolio. Simultaneously, the rivalry for distinction contributed to the production's humor and physical exuberance.

In contrast, the longing of Eifrig's Viola/Cesario evinced a tragic hopelessness, centered on the presumed loss of Viola's brother and the seeming unattainability of her love for Orsino. As the ending moved toward comic recognition of siblings and partners, Eifrig's doubled (even tripled) role as Viola/Cesario and Sebastian, marked by her navy and light-blue costumes, entailed a lyrical choreography involving the actress, the two jackets, and Olivia and Orsino.

But Malvolio's "MOAI" scene, comically punctuated by Toby's, Andrew's, and in this case Feste's ripostes, became the central scene—an encapsulation of the themes of love, desire, deception, illusion, and delusion. Because the production underscored unmasking misperceptions and disguises, it was also fitting that the whole cast sang the last verse of Feste's final song, reminding us that the "play is done." Neither dark nor purely festive, this all-female Twelfth Night acknowledged the shadows even as it espoused—in several senses—the light.