Direct from a sold-out run in London's West End, the critically-beloved, Shakespeare's Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III come to Broadway for a 16-week limited engagement. Two of The Bard's finest plays are performed in repertory by a remarkable cast featuring two-time Tony Award winner Mark Rylance (Jerusalem, Boeing-Boeing), Golden Globe nominee Stephen Fry (Wilde, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) and Tony Award nominee Samuel Barnett (The History Boys).
These classics are presented in the custom of how Shakespeare's plays were originally staged, with an extraordinary all-male company playing male and female roles; actors participating in the pre-show ritual of dressing and preparing their make-up on stage, in front of the audience; music played live on traditional instruments; and lighting created almost exclusively by 100 on-stage candles, adding to the intimate and authentic atmosphere. This is delightfully funny, timeless Shakespeare at its absolute finest, and it is not to be missed!
Outrageous high comedy ensues as the pangs of unrequited love affect the unforgettable characters of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. While the lovelorn Duke Orsino plots to win the heart of the mourning Olivia (Mark Rylance), an alliance of servants and hangers-on scheme against the high handedness of Olivia's steward, the pompous Malvolio (Stephen Fry). When Orsino engages the cross-dressed Viola, who has disguised herself as a young man under the name Cesario, to plead with Olivia on his behalf, a bittersweet and hilarious chain of events follows.
This is typical of the way the Globe’s methods enhance the experience of Twelfth Night. But it would be an excellent production anyway. It is (like Richard) beautifully spoken and perfectly audible throughout the theater without a single microphone. With so little in the way of trickery to fall back on, the actors’ choices are especially clear and sometimes novel. Samuel Barnett (one of the History Boys on Broadway) is a touching Viola and a game Cesario; Liam Brennan makes Orsino’s melancholy unusually manly; Angus Wright’s Aguecheek is somehow dignified in his imbecility. And Stephen Fry, in his first Broadway appearance, makes a smart and original case for Malvolio. Usually a grotesque prig and egomaniac, he is here nothing much worse than a stuffy manager-type; it is only the vicious baiting of the court rowdies that exposes his repressed self-delight and gaudy inner fop.
As Olivia, he glides across the stage like a hovercraft, first veiled in mourning weeds then transformed by her affection for Cesario, who is in fact the disguised Viola (and thus, in this case, a man playing a woman playing a man).
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