Shipwrecked romantics get washed ashore in Seattle Shakespeare Company's sparkling comedy Twelfth Night directed by Jon Kretzu at the Center Theatre at Seattle Center. Performances are today, October 21-November 16, 2014 (Previews October 21-23, Opening Night Friday October 24). Performance times: Wednesday-Saturday at 7:30 PM with selected Saturdays at 2PM and selected Sundays at 2PM and 7:30PM
Love lost. Love found. Love turned upside down. Desire gets turned on its ear when shipwrecked twins Viola and Sebastian roam the heartsick island of Illyria. Orsino loves Olivia, but she pays him no mind. Olivia has fallen for Viola, whom she's mistaken for a boy. Viola loves Orsino, and he has no idea she's a girl. Toby Belch, Andrew, Feste, and Maria love playing pranks on Malvolio, who is in love with love (and himself). Strange romance gives way to a miracle in this comedy of misplaced longing.
"The play for me is so much about all the different parts of love," said director Jon Kretzu at the first rehearsal for Twelfth Night. "All the things that love does to us. Not just the jolly parts, but all the really painful stuff that it brings up. And loneliness. Illyria just seemed like this incredible, fantastical place where people had to face their own feelings and deal with their own emotions and their own essential loneliness." Kretzu and his design team have created a lush, elegant, and murky world of willows and shipwrecked furniture where the light of day is always at dusk and the characters are all grasping for something or someone to keep them from drowning in their own emotions.
Kretzu returns to Seattle Shakespeare Company having previously directed the 2013 production of Love's Labour's Lost. He is the former Associate Artistic Director of Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland.
Several of the cast members from Kretzu's production of Love's Labour's Lost return for Twelfth Night including
Allie Pratt as Viola and
Jay Myers as Orsino, as well as
Mike Dooly (Sir Toby),
David Quicksall (Malvolio), and
George Mount (Sir Andrew).
Elinor Gunn who recently played Cordelia in King Lear will play Olivia. Conner Neddersen and Christopher Morson, seen this past summer as Valentine and Speed in the Wooden O production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona will play Feste and Sebastian.
Julie Briskman who played Jenny in The Threepenny Opera in 2011 will play Maria. This is the fifth time Seattle Shakespeare Company has produced Twelfth Night in the company's 24 year history
Tickets to Twelfth Night are available now through the Seattle Shakespeare Company Box Office at
206-733-8222 as well as online at
www.seattleshakespeare.org.
PRODUCTION TEAM: Jon Kretzu (Director), Andrea Bryn Bush (Set Designer), Christine Meyers (Costume Designer), Kent Cubbage (Lighting Designer), Harry Jamieson (Sound Designer), Marleigh Driscoll (Props Designer), Peter Dylan O'Connor (Fight Choreographer), Wade Madsen (Movement Choreographer), Susannah Butler (Stage Manager).
CAST (in alphabetical order): Julie Briskman (Maria), J. Samuel Cowan (Ensemble), Mike Dooly (Sir Toby Belch), Spencer Hamp (Ensemble), Drew Highlands (Ensemble), Elinor Gunn (Olivia), Christopher Morson (Sebastian), George Mount (Andrew Aguecheek), Jay Myers (Orsino), Conner Neddersen (Feste), Allie Pratt (Viola), David Quicksall (Malvolio), Joey Shaw (Antonio).
Performances take place at: Center Theatre at Seattle Center, 305 Harrison Street, Seattle, WA 98109
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