Gender Confusion The Shakespeare Way

The plot of ‘Twelfth Night,” currently on stage at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., is really quite simple.

She loves the Duke, but he think’s she’s a he, since she dresses like one after washing up on shore after a boat wreck that she thinks killed her twin brother.  So, he sends her/him to plead his case to the countess he believes he loves ... except the countess then falls in love with him/her thinking it’s he, not she.  

If that’s clear, then throw in a subplot where the countess’s uncle, his silly friend, the house jester and the maidservant plot against the doddering, imperious manservant because he had the audacity to suggest to the carousing uncle and his fatuous friends that there is more to life than “cakes and ale.”

You get the picture.

From the moment when the darkened stage of the Tina Packer Playhouse is filled with the cast, dancing as if in a 1959 oceanfront music hall, until the charming final dance, which elegantly turns into a standing - ovation curtain call, Director Allyn Burrows has taken a raucous Shakespeare comedy of mistaken identity and layers of misunderstanding, preserving every nuance, plot twist and explosive laugh and placed an appreciative audience right at the edge of the dance floor.

Burrows’ concept is so imaginative, and the set designed by Cristina Todesco and lighted by Deb Sullivan so perfect to the environment, that the Elizabethan language melts away and the elegance of the acting company simply glows.

There are Shakespeare & Company veterans in the cast — including 24th season veteran Martin Jason Asprey, an internationally celebrated Shakespearean actor, and 12th year veteran, comic genius Nigel Gore, who makes Sir Andrew Aguecheek seem as profoundly silly as a politician “torn from the headlines.”  And, there are newcomers such as Miles Anderson, whose impressive credits include 10 years at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Anderson’s portrayal of the woebegone manservant Malvolio is simply showstopping. His unrequited love for Countess Olivia, played with wonderful complexity by Cloteal L. Horne, is both comedy and tragedy.

Every member of the cast fully inhabits their character.  Burrows cleverly uses music to punctuate the play — after all, this is a seaside dance hall — and the musical accomplishments of the cast are blended so well, one might think the Bard of Avon had presumed that Illyria was right down the boardwalk from Asbury Park.

Gregory Boover is both music director for the production and a supremely talented musician disguised as Feste, the jester. Joining Boover and Gore as the third and fourth members of the gang bringing mayhem and uproarious laughter to the play are Steven Barkhimer and Bella Merlin, playing Sir Toby Belch and Maria, Countess Olivia’s gentlewoman, respectively — both with incredible charm and wit. 

Ella Loudon is captivating in the complex identity of Viola, who, until she is able to rediscover her twin brother Sebastian, presented with compelling energy by multi-talented Deaon Griffin-Pressley, convinces the elegantly pining Bryce Michael Wood as Duke Orsino, as well as the rest of the cast and audience, that Viola is really Cesario — or is it the other way around?  

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“Twelfth Night” runs through August 4 at the Tina Packer Playhouse on the campus of Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, Mass. Tickets are available at 413-637-3353 or online at www.shakepeare.org