Twelfth Night
by James Damico
Cleveland Free Times
July 23, 2003
ALL GLOOMY speculations have been banished from the equally mythical Illyria of Cleveland Shakespeare Festival's sunny Twelfth Night. Several years ago, Great Lakes Theater Festival offered a fetching rendition of the comedy that was almost lugubrious in its focus on the play's darker elements. CSF director Seth Gordon has blithely excised many of those elements from the text and, in the fresh air of this outdoor presentation, concentrated on the classic's froth and farce to come up with some enjoyably light-headed and -hearted summer fare.
Gordon's approach was likely influenced by the ages and relative inexperience of the production's four romantic leads, who are considerably less mature than ideal casting. By emphasizing their spirited, spontaneous youth -- and downplaying the comedy's serious side -- he shrewdly tailors the parts to the performers and shows them to their best advantage (treatment, by the way, three of the quartet did not enjoy in their last Shakespeare outings).
The familiar plot's main occupation is to get the four lovers' couplings untangled. Duke Orsino longs for Countess Olivia, who tumbles for the Duke's stand-in wooer, who is actually Viola, a shipwrecked girl in male disguise who has a thing for the Duke. Pair-offs are further complicated -- and eventually solved -- by the appearance of Sebastian, Viola's twin brother, which brings the plot and sexes into happy balance. A comic subplot is driven by Belch and Aguecheek, a couple of carousing knights, a clown, a serving wench and Malvolio, Olivia's insufferable ass of a steward.
Gordon here confirms his steadily growing reputation as a quality director. He gets things off to a slow start establishing a vaguely 1960s setting with an ill-advised pot party hosted by the Duke (a languid Jesse James Kamp). Viola's arrival is also hindered by Kat McIntosh's tendency to declaim. But once the comedians enter, the pace picks up, the antics increase, the romantics get physically goofy, and the farce business gets humorously inventive.
Resembling Michael J. Fox in her white shirt, tie and chinos, McIntosh settles nicely into the foolishness, Scott Esposito is freshly appealing as her twin, Kamp gets amusingly much livelier, and Bernardette Clemens' Countess is alternately and drolly both haughty and horny.
Allen Branstein is his usual atomic energy plant as Belch, and the hilarious Aaron Coleman absolutely purloins the production as an impossibly tall, impossibly skinny, impossibly naïve Aguecheek. In a world of his own is the veteran Robert Hawkes as Malvolio, who gives a fine reading that would hardly disgrace the most prestigious company.
Following its commendable version of Julius Caesar, this Twelfth Night rounds out what adds up to CSF's most artistically satisfying summer of its six-year existence.