[NEohioPAL] Review of "Twelfth Night" at Great Lakes Theater

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Great Lakes’ exposes dark underbelly of romantic comedy ‘Twelfth Night’ 



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics

  

For those keeping score, this is the seventh time that Great Lakes Theater has presented “Twelfth Night, or What You Will,” which is one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies.  Although the story is the same, as are many of the actors, the current production could not be more different than the last time the play was seen on the Hanna Theatre stage.



“Twelfth Night” features a pair of fraternal twins – Sebastian (Jonathan Christopher MacMillan) and Viola (Cassandra Bissell) – who are separated by a shipwreck and carry on their lives thinking the other dead.  Landing on the coastal city of Illyria, Viola disguises herself as a man for protection and to honor her brother, calling herself Cesario.  



She finds employment with Orsino (Juan Rivera Lebron), the Duke of Illyria, with whom she secretly falls in love.  The Duke is in love with the Countess Olivia (Christine Weber) and sends the cross-dressing Viola to woo her on his behalf.  The guarded Countess allows herself to fall in love with the disguised Viola, but accidently beds and weds Sebastian when he happens into town.



In line with the driving subterfuge of gender duality, Shakespeare has given “Twelfth Night” ample doses of both comedy and melancholy, as characters pursue what and who they desire but cannot have.



In 2009, under Charlie Fee’s direction, the Great Lakes production leaned heavily toward the laughs.  It did so by lightening up Illyria with Mediterranean sensibilities and allowing the players to play broadly, boldly and in the spirit of Feste’s line “Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.”  

    

Under director Drew Barr’s creative vision, the play is remarkably dark and restrained.  Fully embracing the notion of night referenced in the play’s title, everything in the world of this production exists in evening’s shadows where the boundaries that define period, place and persona are ambiguous or obscured.



For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/. 
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