TWELFTH NIGHT from The Seattle Shakespeare Company

The Seattle Shakespeare Company is currently presenting the often performed "Twelfth Night" by, of course, William Shakespeare.  The show itself suffers from the curse of being done all too often so unless it's done incredibly well or with some new and interesting angle, it comes across as just OK.  Unfortunately the latter is more the case here.

The story is Shakespeare's classic tale of unrequited love and misdirection.  Viola has been shipwrecked and washed up on the shores of Illyria.  Assuming her twin Brother Sebastian to be dead in the wreck she stumbles ashore and disguises herself as a man in order to survive.  She goes to work for the Duke Orsino who is in love with the recently widowed Lady Olivia.  He sends Viola (who is now called Cesario) to deliver his intentions to Olivia and Olivia falls for Cesario.  Meanwhile Cesario (Viola) has begun to have feelings for the Duke.  Furthermore there's a sub plot of Olivia's Uncle, Sir Toby Belch who wants her to marry his friend the silly Sir Andrew Aguecheek.  Additionally Sir Toby and Sir Andrew have concocted a scheme with Olivia's servant Maria to convince her head steward Malvolio that Olivia is in love with him in order to make him look foolish.  And the hilarity ensues.

The problem, as I said, is that it's been done so many times before that it's become a bit stale unless there's something extraordinary about the production.  In this case, Director, Stephanie Shine has attempted to transport Illyria to Dickensian England. But it does little to lend anything new to the story except allow the actors to dress for the period, sing carols and give the show a vaguely Christmas feel.  I feel that Shine would have been better served to focus her energies on focusing her cast.  Not everyone on stage seemed to be in the same show.  A prime example was Viola, played a bit blandly by Susannah Millonzi, was being portrayed very low key and straight.  Whereas the Duke (the object of her affection), played by Jose A. Rufino, was being played over the top (sometimes too over the top) as a spoiled twit in love.  Not only did this place the two performances in different plays but made it difficult to see why they would have ultimately fallen for each other.  Unfortunately this gave the Lady Olivia, played by Brenda Joyner, little to work with as she is supposed to be part of this bizarre love triangle.  Joyner's performance was enjoyable enough (more so in the sub plot with Malvolio and the twin Sebastian) but as she was trying to keep up with the very different styles from her counterparts in the triangle, the main love story just falls a bit flat.

But then there's the sub plot of the scheme from Sir Toby Belch and company.  It seems odd that this sub plot has more stage time than the main plot but maybe Shakespeare realized it was the more interesting.  And it's really what saved the show here, especially with stand out performances from Maria, played by Carol Roscoe, Malvolio, played by John Bogar and Sir Andrew, played by Darragh Keenan.  Roscoe lends a tremendous amount of stage presence and a mischievous twinkle in her eye to the often thrown away character of Maria.  Bogar switches from the overly straight laced Malvolio (desperately in need of a stick-ectomy) to the ridiculous fop in love, to the man driven mad by the plotters with subtle brilliance and ease.  And last, but certainly not least, Keenan's performance of Sir Andrew was wonderfully absurd.  He manages to take a preposterous character and give him meaning, mostly due to his ability to play the moment of the scene and not the joke.  Keenan's performance reminded me of a young Don Knotts and was a joy to watch.  I especially loved the ludicrous sword fight between he and Viola.  That alone is worth the price of admission.

The rest of the cast is doing what they can in a slightly disjointed show.  The always fantastic Tim Gouran as Sebastian was fun but underused (as that character often is).  And the musicians who kept bursting into song on stage were fine but a bit overused.  All in all an adequate telling of an overdone show.  This is my first time seeing anything from The Seattle Shakespeare Company and I cannot say I was wowed.  I'll be interested to see what they do with their next production of "Electra".

"Twelfth Night" from The Seattle Shakespeare Company plays at the Center house Theatre in the Seattle Center through December 27^th.  For tickets or information contact The Seattle Shakespeare Company Box Office at 206-733-8222 or visit them online at www.seattleshakespeare.org.

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