People’s Light presents Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

This new production from People’s Light is adapted and directed by playwright Andrew Watring. Because of the play’s timeless themes about the quest for romantic love and the disparity between the classes, it’s been adapted for ballet, opera, film, radio, and television over the years. It also helped to inspire the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, in which a noblewoman named Viola disguises herself as a man to act in Romeo and Juliet.

Revelry at the resort

In Watring’s new interpretation, Twelfth Night is set in a contemporary resort hotel in Croatia, on the coast that was known as Illyria in Shakespeare’s time. The masterfully designed set by Baron E. Pugh brings us into a White Lotus-like hotel with a glitzy lobby, beautiful fully stocked bar, tile floors, and gauzy curtains that drape down from two floors above. As in the White Lotus HBO show, this is a world where some people thoughtlessly afford ultra-luxury vacations while others live paycheck to paycheck, serving them.

The play takes off with over-the-top revelry: the overture from The Barber of Seville plays while Malvolio (Todd Lawson), Olivia’s head steward, directs the other stewards to clean up overturned tables and chairs. As they straighten up, they uncover the sleeping guests who have wreaked this havoc, hidden behind the bar or under blankets.

Class tension brews throughout the play, and this version of Twelfth Night equally emphasizes romantic love in all of its forms, including queer love. In the original plot, shipwrecked Viola (the outstanding Allison Jones), separated from her brother whom she assumes has drowned, hides her female identity and becomes male Cesario to gain employment for the wealthy Duke Orsinio (Nayib Felix). Cesario acts as an emissary delivering messages from the Duke to Countess Olivia (Julianna Zinkle), whom he hopes to woo. Olivia falls for Cesario while Viola herself falls for the Duke.

Watring uses Viola’s disguise to explore an expansive expression of gender. Viola is initially drawn to the Duke’s charisma but soon becomes taken with Olivia’s attention. Sebastian (J. Austyn Williamson) is saved from the shipwreck and befriended (and more, in this version) by a sea captain named Antonio (David Pica).

Fun, depth, and energy

Throughout the production, Watring uses contemporary music including “Sweet Caroline” and Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September” to bring the audience into the revelry. This is a high-spirited and fun show, with great physical comedy, dancing, and ensemble performance. Sir Toby Belch (understudy Kevin Bergen at the reviewed performance) and his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Jacob Orr) are wealthy buffoons, there at the resort to drink and party. Costume designer Rebecca Kanach dresses all of the characters to a T (mourning Olivia once sports a black tennis skirt), but Jacob Orr gets special kudos for rocking a Hawaiian shorts set, Crocs, and a very tight Speedo.

The driving energy of the show comes from Jones, who portrays Viola’s gender exploration with sincerity and curiosity. The ensemble of performers are perfectly cast and even the smaller parts, including hotel guest Maria (Shauna Miles) and servant Fabian, played by a rotating cast of high-school students from the People’s Light education program (the terrific Milena Franklin the night I saw it) bring depth and energy. James Carlos Lacey as Feste the Fool brings original music by Liz Filios to life with a very nice voice and chops on guitar.

A vision for an improbable fiction

Watring’s adaptation doesn’t totally hang together for me. We’re supposed to see Malvolio as a villain: as Olivia’s steward, he’s a sort of narcissistic morality police. But maybe because of the opening scene, he appears more like an overwhelmed hotel manager, trying to keep the lobby free of the grown-men frat-boy energy that Sirs Toby and Andrew spill out all over the place. Their antics are so over-the-top that I felt empathy for Malvolio. Later, when they prank Malvolio into apparent madness (in Watring’s version, trapping him in an elevator), it reads as more cruel than funny. This concluding nuptials of this Twelfth Night also diverge from the original, with mixed success.

Despite those flaws, I appreciate the vision brought to this adaptation. As Fabian says, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” Improbable, but also revealing some deep truths about privilege and love.