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On Twilight Cocktails
Seattle Rep's Twelfth Night, which they're nerdily calling Twelfe Night as per the First Folio, is nearly shipwrecked by dull production design and the cast's inability to make anything of the esoteric wordplay that audiences once found witty, or at least clever. But the portrayal of life lived to excess is still gripping drama, and Frank X.'s steward Malvolio burns with a self-importance that veers from comic over-stepping to something much eerier. Tickets start at $15 ($10 for 25 and under).
For comedy past its expiration date, try this byplay between Viola (Christine Marie Brown) and Feste (David Pichette) the dry-witted jester on for size:
Viola: Nay, that’s certain: they that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.If you hear crickets, that's normal. Pichette's Feste convinces as more a loose-tongued, tuneful vagrant than the local Oscar Wilde -- he's Elliott Gould's Tourettic Philip Marlow in a timewarp.
Feste: I would therefore my sister had had no name, sir.
Viola: Why, man?
Feste: Why, sir, her name’s a word; and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton.
Thankfully, Sir Toby Belch (Charles Leggett) is drunken, scheming, and randy enough to keep the humor biting. We give director David Esbjornson high marks for Toby's tackling the Christmas tree, then humping it. (Esbjornson's best touches are recognizable familial scenes going awry.) Toby's dupe, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Andrew McGinn), is tall, thin, and schticky -- Fabian (Nick Garrison), dressed inexplicably but wonderfully like the Cure's Robert Smith, is a minor triumph of wide-eyed nods and dutiful, smiling service. The play he was in seemed more fun, and we wished he had more influence on the rest of the cast.
Things begin grandly enough, music, a storm, two characters floating in mid-air/water and pulled apart, but then the same set remains in place throughout: a sort of boardwalk that rises into a tattered-plank "sail," suggesting the ruins of the ship that Viola and her brother Sebastian (Jacob Blumer) arrive on. Viola disguises herself as a page, Cesario, and goes to work for the Count Who Loves Too Much: Orsino (Barzin Akhavan). Orsino is obsessed with the Countess Who Mopes Too Much: Olivia (Cheyenne Casebier). It becomes Viola's job to disabuse each of their infatuations, though some of it ends up rubbing off on her.
Meanwhile, belowdecks in the subplot, Olivia's uncle, Sir Toby, drinks too much; Sir Andrew is too gullible; Maria (Mari Nelson), is too timid. These last three hatch a plan to teach the steward Malvolio, who's too prim and proper to live, a lesson. Frank X.'s Malvolio has the unfortunate role of scapegoat -- it's he who will take excess upon himself, become grandiose and over-reach, and he who will stalk off cloaked in bitterness. Later on, Shakespeare would leave scapegoating behind, but here the piling on creates a character who, like a Lucifer in social freefall, paradoxically transcends his station.
Photos: (top, l-r)) Cheyenne Casebier as Olivia and Christine Marie Brown as Viola; (lower, clockwise) Frank X as Malvolio, Charles Leggett as Sir Toby Belch, Andrew McGiunn as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Nick Garrison as Fabian. Photos Chris Bennion © 2007.
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