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by William Shakespeare, directed by Antoni Cimolino

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

May 29-November 2, 2001

“The appetite may sicken and so die”

"Twelfth Night" is the least necessary Shakespeare revival on this season's Stratford Festival playbill.  Of the Festival's 49 seasons "Twelfth Night" had 3 productions in the first 25.  In the following 24 seasons it has had 6 more.  Anyone approaching a play too often produced will have to have something new to say to justify another mounting.  Antoni Cimolino, directing for the first time at the Festival Theatre, does not.  Rather than arriving at a fresh interpretation, Cimolino's inexperience leads him to imitate some of the worst habits of other Shakespeare productions at the Festival.  Albert Schultz's low-budget "Twelfth Night" for Soulpepper last year is still the clearest and most incisive production of the play I have yet seen.  Cimolino's production proves that a big budget, lots of costumes and even veteran actors cannot make up for a lack of directorial insight. 

The play begins with Duke Orsino's famous lines: "If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die".  The return to normality after surfeit is the theme of the play and the reason it is set on Twelfth Night, the last day of the Christmas season.  Cimolino is able to find this theme in the main plot involving the self-indulgently romantic Orsino, but not in Olivia, who has mourned her brother for more than a year and will entertain no male visitors.  As Cimolino has Michelle Giroux play it, Olivia, contrary to the text is not deeply in mourning at all.  That she should fall in love with Orsino's messenger, the girl Viola disguised a boy, thus loses its point. 

The same is true in the subplot involving Olivia's cousin Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Olivia pompous servant Malvolio.  Unlike Albert Schultz, Cimolino shows no understanding of how the subplot is related to the main plot and treats it as merely a series of farcical interludes.  He has missed the fact that Sir Toby is as guilty of excess as Orsino and Olivia in the way he toys with other people like Aguecheek and Malvolio.  Like Orsino and Olivia he, too, surfeits on the excess of his own  joking as he states outright in Act 4.  Cimolino ignores the text and tries foolishly to milk humour out of Feste's taunting of the imprisoned Malvolio when Sir Toby and Feste have both had enough of their prank.  To miss the connection of the central theme to Olivia, Toby and Feste shows only a superficial understanding of the play.  It is unsurprising, therefore, that Cimolino gives not one visual hint that the action is occurring on Twelfth Night.

A former assistant director to Richard Monette, Cimolino has fallen into Monette's now-standard anything-for-a-joke style.  After having done very well at building up a believable, detailed world on stage, Cimolino destroys it by making Sir Toby and Aguecheek so over-the-top and Malvolio's letter and cross-gartered scenes so cartoonish that any sense of realism, theatrical or psychological, is lost.  He has moved Shakespeare's Illyria to Greece in the 1920s, it seems, only for its local colour.  Change of location has no point unless it has some interpretative function.  Here is does not. 

Cimolino is not helped by designer Francesca Callow.  Superficially she captures the look of Greek village costumes, but, like Cimolino, has no sense of the importance of social status in their chosen time and place.  Why do they allow Malvolio to appear in his undershirt before his mistress when he is purposely trying to impress her?  Why does she costume Olivia's maid more extravagantly than her mistress?  Why does she give Olivia a spring dress that makes her look more like a streetwalker than a countess? 

While his lighting for the opening storm scene is very effective, Steven Hawkins' low-intensity dappling for most outdoor scenes never captures the crisp, clear light that Greece is known for, even when characters speak of the bright sunlight.  Berthold Carrière has provided pleasant setting for Feste's well-known songs and some lively bouzouki music, but why do we keep hearing "Lara's Theme" from "Dr. Zhivago" as a leitmotif if this is Greece? 

Besides important weaknesses in direction and design, the production suffers from weaknesses in acting.  Neither Sean Arbuckle (Orsino) nor Michelle Giroux (Olivia) has the technique to play such major roles.  Neither seems capable of expressing more than one emotion at a time and switch from one to the next as if changing lanes.  Arbuckle has poor voice control and Giroux never varies her intonation or her gestures.  On the other hand, James Blendick (Sir Toby), Michael Therriault (Aguecheek) and Peter Donaldson (Malvolio) are known to be fine actors, but, as directed by Cimolino, Therriault's pratfalls and the over-emphatic acting of both Blendick and Donaldson soon become tiresome.

On the plus side, Tara Rosling (Viola) in her  Stratford debut is a real find.  She has an unusual voice, but unlike Arbuckle or Giroux, she gives her character detail and nuance.  Domini Blythe (Maria) has such presence she lights up whatever scene she appears in.  And William Hutt (Feste) could teach the younger generation volumes about phrasing, comic timing and sotto voce projection.  In lesser roles Nicolas Van Burek (Sebastian), Paul Dunn (Fabian) and Robert King (Antonio) all do well, but John Dolan (Captain and alternate for Feste), in an otherwise clearly-spoken production, is alone in being incomprehensible.

One would think that being Executive Director of the North America's largest repertory theatre would be a full-time job.  But Antoni Cimolino obviously wants to add to his handful of past directing credits.  Directors working at Stratford should be the very best in their field, not just those who want to keep a hand in.  To maintain its vitality Stratford needs to seek out some of the large number of innovative and experienced directors Canada has brought forth.  Judging from this superficial "Twelfth Night" Cimolino should stay behind his desk.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Tara Rosling and Sean Arbuckle. ©2001 Stratford Festival.