TWELFTH NIGHT
Carole Osterink
ccSCOOP Review
08-23-09 - Walking the dog Theater rarely disappoints, especially when they’re doing Shakespeare, and their production of Twelfth Night, created in collaboration with the Gloucester Theatre in the UK, is no exception. The company has both the creative talent and the serious knowledge of Shakespeare to be innovative and inventive and to make the plays effortlessly accessible to the audience.
WTD’s production of Twelfth Night opens with a bit of characteristically inventive staging: the shipwreck. The entire ensemble, positioned together to form the shape of a ship, enact through movement the buffeting by wind and waves and the final destruction of the ship on the shores of Illyria.
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Twin siblings Viola and Sebastian reunited
(left to right: Ashley Mayne, Alexander Gifford, Melania Levitsky, and Jacob Woods) |
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Illyria, the mythical land that is the setting for the play, is something of a mystery. No one knows for sure the geographic location Shakespeare had in mind. So, WTD and their collaborators decided to make it Turkey. Why not Turkey? The choice influenced the set design, the costumes, and the music, although the last resulted in a little incongruity. The incidental music heard throughout the play, filling the intervals between scenes, had a definite Middle Eastern sound. They even went to the trouble of borrowing a bouzouki to be used as a prop. But the songs from the play that were included in this production were sung to their traditional Elizabethan tunes.
Niggling aside, WTD’s Twelfth Night is overall a well done, engaging, and highly successful production. David Anderson as Malvolio, the star of the play’s comic subplot, deserves special recognition. As the Countess of Illyria’s steward, Anderson achieves just the right amount of overweening officiousness to justify the meanness of the trick played on him and just enough pompous self-importance to make his gullibility believable.
I attended a preview performance, and I’m told that much has changed since then. I don’t know what exactly the changes are, but the production photos I received recently suggest that there may have been some modifications to the costumes. That would be a good thing. Most of the players are dressed in very similar costumes, which, in this ensemble production, is the source of some confusion. With all but two of the actors playing more than one role, it was sometimes hard—without adequate visual clues—to recognize readily which character an actor was playing in a new scene. Perhaps it was to compensate for this that Anderson affected a rather bizarre and obvious accent when he appeared as Antonio instead of Malvolio. Some modification to Maria’s costume would also have been in order since it was unflattering to the point of being distracting.
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David Anderson as Malvolio with Wayne Pyle (left) and
Eddie Allen (right)
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All that aside, I recommend that you hie thee to PS21 to see Walking the dog Theater’s Twelfth Night while there’s still time. There are five more performances—Wednesday through Sunday, August 26 through 30. Each night, the performance begins at 8 p.m. To purchase tickets, visit wdttheater.org or call 518 392-6121.
And when you go remember that it gets quite cold at the PS21 Tent after the sun goes down, and there are mosquitoes. Blankets and insect repellent are graciously provided, but to ensure your own comfort, it’s necessary to dress appropriately.
Photos by Daniel Region
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