Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night
By William Shakespeare. Sport For Jove Theatre Company. Riverside Theatre Parramatta, Mar 5 – 8, 2014 & Seymour Centre, Sydney April 1 – 9, 2014.

Foot-tapping 1960s hits boom around the theatre pre-show; a wooden jetty juts out into the audience; and on a pontoon in the centre of the stage a beach party on the shore of Illyria is in full swing, with Count Orsino (Anthony Gooley) preening amongst his courtiers!

Taking Twelfth Night into the 1960s has given director Damien Ryan full rein to use his well-proven vision and creative imagination. With designers Anna Gardiner (set), David Stalley (sound), Toby Knyvett (lighting) and Christopher Harley (original music), he has moved Shakespeare’s play into a setting where narcissism is par for the course! It’s Puberty Blues, Gidget, surfboards, coconut oil … and it fits Shakespeare’s perceptive tale about self-love and unrequited desire like a pair of wet speedos!

There are some very clever pieces of theatre in this production. For example, from the pontoon, a bright blue parachute ‘sea’ is spread across the stage, with holes into which brave actors ‘dive’ – and emerge dripping wet! It is tossed and swayed as the sky darkens and thunderous sounds transform it into the stormy sea in which Viola’s ship is tossed. The pontoon becomes Orsino’s court; Viola emerges and crawls on to the jetty, and, lost and alone, takes on the persona of Caesario, based on the twin brother she thinks she has lost.

Across the ‘bay’, the cast establish Olivia (Megan Drury) in a birdcage-like gazebo that contrasts symbolically with the black she wears as she also mourns a lost brother and swears to hide her beauty from the world and rebuff Orsino’s advances – that is until his new young envoy Caesario arrives and Shakespeare’s complications begin.

The eighteen-strong cast works with high spirits and energy throughout this production. Their characters are strong and vibrant, even when they are moving props and transforming scenes. They establish an atmosphere of vitality that pervades the production and captures “the play’s wonderful sunlit holiday spirit and its bleakness, hated, revenge and madness” (Damien Ryan).

Abigail Austin is impressive as Viola. She mixes Viola’s strength of resolve with vestiges of self doubt, none more amusing than her mute pleas to the audience in difficult moments, as before she takes on the very tall but awkward Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Mike Pigott) in a boxing match! Yes! The fight scenes are beautifully choreographed – and very funny – boxing matches! Another example of Ryan’s imaginative vision.

With Gooley’s vain, self-obsessed Orsino, and Drury’s arrogant but empathetic Olivia, Austin sustains the nuances necessary to make the role both plausible and transparent – and through that, and some very nice pieces of direction, finds poignancy and humour in her character.

The famous ‘box tree’ scene, where Toby Belch (James Lugton), Aguecheek and Fabienne (Teresa Jakovich) play a wicked trick on the despised Malvolio, is very funny. Set around a mobile ice cream trolley, with Fabienne on roller skates, Malvolio (Robin Goldsworthy) makes the very most of every word of the letter written by Maria (Bernadette Ryan) in Olivia’s hand. Goldsworthy is a wonderful Malvolio, underplaying the part in earlier scenes (another fine directorial decision), then building to a self-deceived strength that founders piteously in misery and derision – but does actually get a moment of ‘revenge’ in this production!

There is so much that is innovative about this production. Yet, though fast and rollicking, it still maintains the introspection and melancholy that is the real heart of the play, and is made poignantly clear in Tyran Parke’s rendition of  Feste’s final song, ‘The Wind and the Rain’ put beautifully to music by Christopher Harley.

Carol Wimmer

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