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by William Shakespeare, directed by Albert Schultz

Soulpepper Theatre Company, du Maurier Theatre Centre, Toronto

August 16-October 7, 2000

“Vitality and Variability”

"Twelfth Night" is the Soulpepper Theatre Company's first foray into Shakespeare and its first presentation involving their Young Company.  The play was to have alternated with "Romeo and Juliet", but an injury sidelined the Romeo and forced cancellation of the production.  Soulpepper was formed by former members of Robin Phillips' Young Company at the Stratford Festival, young actors who, after working alongside more experienced actors, were eventually to have taken their place in the Stratford company.  That never happened.  Now Soulpepper has formed its own Young Company, and the vitality and variability that were present in the Stratford Young Company productions are plainly visible here.

   

I should say at the start that this is one of the most intelligently spoken "Twelfth Nights" I have ever seen.  Soulpepper has always emphasized text-based productions, eschewing the expensive sets and costumes that encumber so many Stratford shows.  The entire cast speaks Shakespeare's verse so clearly and naturally that every line makes sense.  Lines that are often throw away are given purpose, endowing the whole production with unusual clarity and integrity.  Credit is due to the Soulpepper training courses, to Albert Schultz, the director, and to the talented cast he assembled. 

   

Unlike so many Shakespeare productions nowadays, this one does not force a concept on to the play, but rather works from the text outwards.  As a result, this "Twelfth Night" does not  become "The Malvolio Show", as it has been virtually every time I've seen it; rather, the Malvolio plot becomes what it should be—a subplot that is the comic reflection of the romantic main plot involving Orsino, Viola and Olivia.  Schultz makes this parallel perfectly clear at the ending, placing Orsino and Viola on stage right and Olivia and Sebastian on stage left, Malvolio entering between them holding the fateful letter.  All three—Orsino, Olivia and Malvolio—all absolute and high-minded in different ways, have each been made a fool.  Orsino marries someone he had thought was a boy, Olivia marries someone she doesn't know and Malvolio believes a forged love-letter.  All three have believed what they wished to believe based solely on appearances, hence the subtitle to the play, "What You Will".

   

By integrating the Malvolio plot into the rest of the play, all the scenes with Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are no longer the pointless, boisterous interludes they usually are but rather reinforce the play's theme of purging through surfeit.  Indeed, in this production Aguecheek becomes as comic a figure as Malvolio and Toby and Maria become dual agents of the plot.  It's true, when the comic scenes are not played up as if they were the raison d'être of the play, they are not quite so knee-slappingly funny; at the same time, the play as whole makes much more sense and gains in depth and mood  far more than it loses in farcicality.  Only on two or three occasions does Schultz add in gestural references external to the play to get a laugh, a technique I hope he will keep in check.

   

The mix of new and seasoned actors is of laudable benefit to the new actors, but it can lead, as here, to an unevenness in performance.  Of the three young actors in major roles, Kristin Booth as Olivia is the most impressive.  Her presence and delivery are very assured, but she could have more fully characterized her role.  Patricia Fagan, whose performances I’ve enjoyed at George Brown College, is an excellent choice for Viola.  Fagan is especially good at communicating conflicting emotions, which is pretty well Viola’s situation throughout the play.  With more voice coaching she will be an even more effective performer.  Richard Clarkin as Orsino has the clearest diction of the young actors and a fine voice, but there seems to be little passion or personality behind what he says.  David Stemer is physically well matched with Fagan, his "twin", but seems unable to speak his lines very pointedly and so misses out most of the humour of his part.  Christian Lloyd as Fabian and Curio fails to make much of an impression.

     

These young actors are surrounded by seasoned actors of a very high calibre.  Chief among these is John Neville as Feste giving the finest performance of that role I have seen.  This is Shakespeare’s wisest fool who knows that the people around him will only gain knowledge if they are allowed to make fools of themselves  Neville’s Feste becomes the focus for a sense of melancholy and bemused acquiescence that pervades the whole production.  Neville’s singing of Ted Dykstra’s lovely arrangements of Feste’s many songs is a real delight.  Schultz even allows Feste to eat a banana as he talks to the imprisoned Malvolio--a Soulpepper in-joke relating Feste speaking into the void to Neville-as-Krapp speaking into his tape recorder.  It is a pleasure to see Oliver Dennis in the central role of Malvolio.  His performance is expertly judged to mine all the humour of his character and yet not overwhelm the main plot of the play.  What is clearest in his performance, that never is when, say, Brian Bedford plays the role, is that Malvolio is Olivia’s servant as much as Maria is and no supposed amount of moral superiority on his part can alter that fact.  Dennis also generates enough sympathy for Malvolio in the Sir Topas scenes that, for a change, we, too, feel the joke on him has gone too far. 

   

The senior members of the so-called "kitchen scenes" are all excellent—Randy Hughson as Sir Toby Belch, Steven Sutcliffe as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Maria Vacratsis as Maria.  Importantly, Hughson does not play Sir Toby as merely a drunkard as happens far too often.  Rather this is a man fully aware of what he is doing.  He amuses himself by gulling Aguecheek and feels it’s his right to enjoy himself as much as he wishes in his kinswoman’s house.  Yet, Hughson’s Toby can suddenly speak in dead earnest to shatter the mood of revelry.  Now that we see a serious side in Toby, his attraction to the practical-minded Maria also makes more sense.  Sutcliffe’s hilariously dopey Aguecheek is nuanced enough that, for a change, the parallel between him and Malvolio is clear.  In the remaining roles, Michael Hanrahan gives Antonio an intensity often missing in that part and Dragoslav Tanaskovic, as an accordion-playing musician helps cast a melancholy mood over the play and later is visually quite funny as the priest. 

   

The play is staged on an almost entirely bare stage.  John Thompson's set design consists of a huge blue cloth that hangs from the third storey of the du Maurier Theatre and various functional benches, tables and risers, all in uniform style, that in diverse combinations suggest the different scenes.  With such a minimal set, it is primarily Louise Guinand’s imaginative and highly evocative lighting that establish the mood of each scene.  Sean Breaugh’s costumes, placing the action in the mid-19th century, are clever in making Viola and Sebastian really look like twins and in relating Sir Toby and Aguecheek to Orsino and Olivia, who are, after all, their social equals. 

   

While clarity of both plot and speech seem to have been Schultz’s prime concerns, the play is not staged with quite the imagination one might find in his own mentor, Robin Phillips.  Schultz’s best invention is to set a crucial interview between Orsino and Viola on a dock, with Orsino going for a swim and asking the embarrassed Viola to join him.  This scene cuts to the heart of the situation in a way no other scene does.  Schultz’s attempt to place the play in the frame as the Sea Captain’s story, is not emphasized enough to be worth the bother and adds nothing to the play anyway.

   

Nevertheless, despite its imperfections, this "Twelfth Night" is well worth seeing because so much about it—-its mood, its clarity, its intelligence—-is so right.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Kristin Booth. ©2000 Soulpepper Theatre Company.