Photo by Josh Darr. L to R: Julia Rowley as Maria, Kevin Theis as Sir Toby Belch, Josh Carpenter as Malvolio.
Twelfth Night is, on some level, a play about young people learning to deal with the immense feelings of adulthood. These characters are unable to handle the outsized emotions that accompany love and loss in the adult world. After all, the play’s famous first line (“If music be the food of love, play on”) is delivered to the musicians so Duke Orsino can wallow in his misery. Anyone who has been a teenager can relate. Complicating matters is the presence of an equally irresponsible older generation represented by the dipsomaniac Sir Toby Belch. Twelfth Night is the story of a society learning how to make itself work again after a period of instability. That idea guides the new production currently running as a part of the Oak Park Festival Theatre’s 50th anniversary season.
Director Peter G. Andersen explains in his introductory note that his interest in the piece is in watching Illyria transform from a place marred by grief and dysfunction to one celebrating love and renewal. He sees it as a reverse tragedy, drawing order out of chaos. This production’s journey along that path is somewhat fitful but ultimately rewarding thanks to some lovely design and a sharp cast that uniformly brings the language to life.
The set, designed by Evan Frank, blends classic early modern theatrical elements (e.g., it’s configured as a thrust with a balcony and pillars that create multiple levels and spaces for playing) with some trap-door-like shutters and a bright, festive color scheme. This friendly edifice welcomes the audience into the park and promises some madcap hijinks. It’s a perfect playing space for a Shakespeare comedy, offering a delightful playground for all manner of wild, frenetic action. The kinetic potential of the set is somewhat squandered, however, because the first half of the play is visually inert, hamstringing the drama.
This Twelfth Night is basically a tale of two halves. It opens with a lot of promise, with most of the cast appearing for a song that soundtracks the funeral of Olivia’s brother. Unfortunately, most of the rest of this act (NB: Though Shakespeare’s plays are five acts as written, I’m using the term here to denote what happens before and after the intermission) is painfully static. There’s a lot of scenes in which two characters stand and talk to one another or deliver soliloquies without much visual variation. A few small moments break this pattern — Malvolio running through the entire park to catch Cesario and present him with Olivia’s ring was a fun touch — but the first half moves quite slowly. We don’t really see the space used to its full potential until Malvolio’s gulling scene at the end of the first act.
Even the Sir Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek material, which has the potential for some raucous fun, is oddly muted. For example, in their first scene, the pair (and some companions) enter drunkenly singing the end of “Pink Pony Club,” but it’s over so quickly that it barely registers as anything more than a quick nod to a pop song. This felt like a half-measure, a slight nod to contemporary pop culture, that would’ve benefitted more from fully interpolating the song into the text.
Likewise, Twelfth Night features one of Shakespeare’s most interesting and musical fools in Feste. Early in the plot, as he engages in some playful badinage with Olivia about the impropriety of her grief, we see the salutary effect his mischievous point of view can have on this world. For a production interested in depicting a world transformed from grief to joy, Feste is well-suited to driving the action. Elijah Newton, who plays the character here, has a fine voice and handles the wordplay dextrously. But most of his songs are accompanied just by his own acoustic guitar, which feels too small in size for an outdoor space like the Austin Gardens park. This production also keeps Fabian a separate character instead of combining him with Feste. Although that’s a perfectly defensible choice and Kason Chesky is good in the role, it further diminishes Feste’s impact on the world of the play. This isn’t a mistake, necessarily, but much of the play’s first half is dulled by this kind of missed opportunity.
Once the play finally gets going, though, the ensemble has a good deal of fun playing in the charming sandbox Frank gave them. The gulling scene features some classic hide-and-seek staging as Fabian, Toby, and Maria evade Malvolio with the help of the pillars, some plants, and even creative posing. The second act fully embraced this type of slapstick, with the fights between Sir Andrew and both Viola and Sebastian serving as a masterclass in comic storytelling. J. Cody Hunt as Sir Andrew and Ama Kowonu and Noah Lash as the twins showcase some admirable physical dexterity in these scenes.
Similarly, Josh Carpenter made the most out of Malvolio’s cross-gartering. Looking ridiculous in a pink wrestling singlet and yellow stockings, Carpenter showcased Malvolio’s transformation with a series of bold physical choices that fully unlocked the play’s joyousness. Up to this point, he played Malvolio as an officious weirdo. His spirited high-kicking brings one of Shakespeare’s funniest scenes vividly to life in a way that defies the play’s 400-year-old age.
By evening’s end, this Twelfth Night has shaken off its sluggish start to deliver a fast-paced adventure. The lively climax features a wide-open and big-hearted performance from Madison Kiernan as Olivia, clad in a hilarious bright pink wedding gown, stage-managing the mistaken identity comedy of the finale as it crackles with intensity and wit. The audience, sitting in a lovely garden on a warm summer night, will certainly enjoy the liveliness of the language and the brightness of the performances. And maybe they’ll consider what it might look like for young people to repair a broken world.
Recommended
Twelfth Night plays at the Oak Park Festival Theatre in Austin Gardens, 167 Forest Avenue, Oak Park, until August 16th. Performances are Thursday- Saturday at 8:00pm and Sundays at 7:00pm with select Wednesdays. Tickets are available online at oakparkfestival.com or by calling the box office at (708) 300-9396, ext. 101.