While watching Twelfth Night this afternoon in Stratford, I was frustrated by my blurred memories of previous shows.  I know that I had previously seen Twelfth Night in Stratford some years ago, though I don’t recall exactly when and also the amazing performance with James Keegan at the Blackfriars four summers ago in 08-09, followed by what seemed to me a dismal performance the following summer in Washington DC in 09-10.  This must then have been the fourth time that I have seen Twelfth Night in performance live on the stage.  Unfortunately, my memories of these four performances are hard to distinguish and I wish I would have recorded at least a brief reflection in writing on my blog after each performance.  With that said, as I sat watching this afternoon, I resolved to take some minutes this evening and reflect upon the performance.

One of the things that I do recall from the first time seeing Twelfth Night in Stratford some years ago was the treatment of Antonio.  I remember an ending where all the other characters danced and reveled on stage while Antonio sat dismally alone on the stage stairs.  In that performance, it seemed much more that Antonio truly doted upon Sebastian, but in sharp contrast to the previous Stratford performance, Antonio, this time played by Michael Blake, stayed on stage and was actively involved with the dancing and revelry alongside the other characters.  He was happy; this Antonio hadn’t just lost something like the previous Antonio.  I think these two different endings for Antonio say something very different about his character.  If we are to read in the earlier rendition a sense of frustration and alienation in the doting Antonio, it suggests that his affection for Sebastian was not entirely platonic; it makes him a much fuller, more human character.  If though, he is able to take joy in Sebastian’s union with Olivia, then that suggests something very much platonic, and leaves no explanation for his willingness to sacrifice so much for Sebastian.  This afternoon’s performance of Antonio was disappointing as a result.  I think the prior portrayal creates a significantly deeper character with an entirely other dimension of interest which piques my own curiosity.   If Antonio has a homoerotic interest in Antonio, then that transforms into a much more round and interesting character than simply the flat foil who helps move the action in those scenes that involve Sebastian.  I’d like to see more in him, and more in many of Shakespeare’s minor characters, than such a two-dimensional person.  Both portrayals are valid textually, but the earlier presents a much deeper and more interesting look at the character.  I’m not saying he’s got to be portrayed as a homosexual, but anytime you make the minor characters more round, you enrich the entire performance.

Malvolio did not participate in the festivities either in that earlier performance; instead I recall that at the very last moment before the lights went out, he captured Feste in a cage, the same cage he himself had been captured in earlier in the performance.  He was not there, though, at all at the end in today’s performance – he had already stormed off stage after delivering his crowd-hushing “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you” which was fascinating because he seemed to direct his anger directly towards the audience which I think likely caused some of us to feel a pang of guilt for having laughed at his situation; he had made us all accomplices.  I think this performance left us with a much stronger sense of the malice that Malvolio might be capable of.  By leaving it open, we are left to wonder at the revenge he will eventually take on “us”.  In the previous, we have a more comic ending, where the audience sees that his revenge will be merely something funny and playful.  Both choices were great ones, putting Feste in a cage the more comical of the two, and today’s performance darker and more tragic.

Another point with which I take issue is when Sir Andrew, played by Stephen Ouimette, delivers his line “I was adored once too.”  This is one of my favorite lines in the play and I even noticed in the Theater Store that a tee shirt is offered that says this line across the chest.  I once read a critic – though I forget now who – who wrote that this is the one line in which we take Sir Andrew seriously, the one moment in which we feel sorry for him, the single line that gives him an entirely other dimension to his character.  Like Antonio, he is not a one-dimensional jester-type character, but instead somebody with a history, a history in which he too was once adored, once loved.  This line says so much about him, endears the audience to him in a way that contrasts sharply with all of the other lines which are humorous.  In this performance, though, the audience laughed.  I don’t know if the actor intended them to laugh or not, but they did.  I didn’t laugh.  It wasn’t funny.  It’s not a funny line.   This was a preview performance, and I hope that the actor playing Sir Andrew finds a way to fix that line for future performances.  There’s so much there he can do with that line.  With that said, though, I must also add that I think Sir Andrew was the highlight of the performance.  He used gesture and movement to capture his (other) lines in a way that suggested comic genius.  He had the audience in stitches nearly the whole performance.  For example, in his fight with Cesario/Viola, the two simply touch swords, they clank softly against one another, and he turns his head away in terror.  It was very funny.  When told to put his sword up, he thrust it right up into the air, ready in a moment to surrender the fight at the first opportunity.  He was able to find instances in the language and take unique turns with them that kept the audience guessing.  Moments like this filled up the performance.  Though Sir Toby’s performance was acceptable, he was outdone in this performance by Sir Andrew.

This was a performance filled with too with sport.  The play opened with music and the second scene of the play in which Viola lands on the beach.  Several sports were also played on stage and the idea of sport was an important theme throughout the play.  On his first appearance, Sir Toby follows a flying golf ball onto the stage, dressed in the most outrageous of golf attire.  At one point, he takes aim at the audience and I’m certain many of those in the audience cringed in the dark for fear he was about to hit the ball at them.  It was a great moment in which the audience was included.  In a scene with Orsino and Cesario, they mime taking practice swings with a baseball bat in a batting cage, complete with appropriate sound effects.  When Malvolio, in yellow stockings cross-gartered, attempts to woo Olivia, he interrupts at a game of tennis with her ladies. (The net that served as a background for batting practice became the net now for tennis.)  This sport emphasized that this is a play about festivity and play-time.

The portrayal of Feste, acted by Ben Carlson, was one of the more interesting that I’ve seen.  He seemed in this performance somehow wiser than I’ve imagined him in the past.  He is played by an accomplished singer – most if not all the actors were fantastic singers – and he sung his songs with such depth and power, that it was very hard to see him as a clown figure in any sense.  His wit made us laugh, but he didn’t have the body language of other fools I’ve seen (or imagined; like I said my memory feels a bit muddy).  Sir Andrew and Sir Toby and even Maria had great body language that made us laugh, but we were forced to take the fool a bit more seriously than I think we expected to do.  His was an elevated humor, and he captured that well.  Shakespeare’s fools are always fantastic and intriguing characters, but there was something in the solemnity and seriousness of this Feste that seemed unexpected.

The music made this performance different too.  Feste was the highlight in terms of music, but others also were strong singers.  This performance had a lot of music to it, much more than even the Staunton performance which had a lot.  The actors donned leather and had a seventies rock band look to them at times.  The play even started with them dressed this way, and they took the stage to the rock music.  Most of the songs were sung more than once.  One interesting thing was that Feste used contrasting songs in the same scene.  In the drunken evening scene with Sir Toby and Sir Andrew his love song was beautiful, and then he was able to switch to a fun, hell-raising song afterwards that made us all laugh.  The songs and the comedy were the highlights of the performance.

Overall, this was a good performance of Twelfth Night, but not a great performance.  I enjoyed it and it felt good to be back in the Festival Theater for the first time in some five years, but it wasn’t the greatest Stratford performance I’ve been to by any means.  I haven’t mentioned the non-comic characters in any depth because they really didn’t leave any lasting impression upon me.  For the most part, they were dull.  There was nothing in Orsino that really struck me.  The same is true of Olivia; she made me smile a time or two, but for the most part there was nothing in her portrayal of Olivia that amazed me.  Even Viola for the most part seemed dull to me.  I think in comparison with the Staunton version, it just seemed to me that the actors of Stratford don’t fully use their audience.  The Staunton performance was by far the strongest of the four, and it was strong because you became part of the show in a way that I don’t think they try to do in Stratford.  There was the moment when Malvolio looked right into the audience and made us accomplices, perhaps the strongest moment of the whole performance, but there were other missed opportunities when the actors could have brought us into the action ourselves too.  Maybe at this point, though, I’m judging a style of acting instead of accepting the Stratford-style on its own terms.  It was a good show, don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed myself immensely.  It just wasn’t a great show.

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