Summary 
An English company presents a traditional but striking Twelfth Night at the International Theatre Festival of Chicago. Wonderfully entertaining and stylishly performed amid the dark shadow of rising Puritanism and with a very dark conclusion.
Design
Directed by Michael Pennington. Designed by Claire Lyth. Lights by Michael Bogdanov. Musical direction by Terry Mortimer. Assistant direction by Kate Beales.
Cast
Michael Mueller (Orsino), Edward Little (Curio), John Berlyne (Valentine), Jenny Quayle (Viola), Gerard Doyle (Sea Captain), Tracey Mitchell (Maria), Derek Smith (Sir Toby Belch), James Hayes (Sir Andrew Aguecheek), Colin Farrell (Feste), Allie Byrne (Olivia), Timothy Davies (Malvolio), Sean Gilder (Fabian), Alan Cody (Antonio), Vivian Munn (Sebastan).
Analysis
The English Shakespeare Company's Twelfth Night, part of the troupe's only U.S. appearance in 1992, is a romantic and festive production, complemented by delightful characters, playful songs, and slapstick comedy. A troubling sense of darkness and cruelty brews beneath the comically extreme behavior and evolves into the foreboding shadow lurking just beyond the happy ending. Minimally staged with dark curtains, windowed brick-building fronts, and ornate screens with hanging lamps, director Michael Pennington's presentation relies on characterization and broadly comic acting, some of it excellent. Highly entertaining, the production is deceivingly light-hearted and merry: underlying the romantic shipwrecks, mistaken identities, and drunkards and clowns are subtle social commentary and satire.
Sir Toby Belch, attired in riding boots and a drunkenly misbuttoned coat, lurches comically from scene to scene, developing an endearing chemistry with his drinking mate, the red-nosed Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Adorned with balloons, the frizzy-haired, intoxicated Sir Toby, accompanied by Sir Andrew and the clown Feste, awakens the house with drunken revelry that sets dogs to barking. Sir Toby performs a leg-kicking headstand, and the doltish Sir Andrew, dressed in a gaudy orange suit that is nearly covered with an array of streamers, traps himself by spinning into the curtains. The two are delightful to behold, and when they incur the wrath of the "sad and civil" Malvolio, they immediately acquire the sympathy of the audience. Despite Sir Toby's wit and great humor - he admonishingly de-pants the pajamaed Malvolio because "there shall be no more cakes and ale" - he is at heart mean-spirited and rather vulgar, a shameless parasite in Olivia's household. Sir Toby is a drunkard and a vicious practical jokester, as evidenced by the self-entertaining, potentially dangerous duel he orchestrates between Sir Andrew and the hapless Viola. The wonderfully staged relationship between him and Sir Andrew is ultimately superficial, as the unkind Sir Toby is an opportunistic predator upon his "friend" Sir Andrew's money. The victimized Sir Andrew steals several scenes with comic flourishes, and he makes a broken-hearted departure at the end: alone and with a "bloody coxcomb," he is the only character other than Malvolio not included in the wedding party.
Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia are young and attractive, pleasing to the eye, but, nevertheless, self-centered and excessive in their sentiments. The love-sick Duke is first seen on his knees in a darkened, black-curtained room, listening over and over again to Curio's melancholy guitar, until he finally drops his head to the floor in anguish. His "love" for Olivia, however, is portrayed as absurdly excessive, romantic words rather than heart-felt emotion. Similarly, the "too proud" Olivia wears black and is veiled and strictly formal in company, mourning for her brother; her grief, like Orsino's love, is satirically overstated and extravagant, to the point where she is apparently "addicted to a melancholy." Amidst this extreme behavior is Viola, an obvious stranger to the bloated excesses of Illyria, who is disguised as the eunuch Cesario; portrayed with charming expressiveness and pluck by Jenny Quayle (daughter of the late actor and producer Anthony Quayle), Viola is a breath of fresh air for both Orsino and Olivia, and has dramatic effect on both of them, revealing the fatuousness of their behavior. Orsino, finding true friendship and real love, relates easily and naturally with Cesario, claiming he has "unclasped to thee the book even of my secret soul." The two are seen listening side-by-side and hand-in-hand to the clown Feste's love songs, and Orsino often demonstrates genuine affection, caressing Cesario's hair and placing his hand on "his" shoulder. Similarly, Olivia, who has vowed to forswear men for seven years while she mourns her brother, is surprised by her sudden feelings for the refreshingly honest Cesario - "even so quickly may one catch the plague?" - and for the remainder of the play is sprightly and amorous, in a long white dress with white gloves, her long blonde hair now down around her shoulders.
The clown Feste, played with world-weary cynicism, is a fatalistic fool with a beret and a guitar, singing ominously in commentary on the self-absorbed revelry he sees everywhere on the twelfth and final night of traditional holiday festivity: "what's to come is still unsure." Although a drinking companion of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, Feste is presented as much more the wry observer rather than as an active participant. Still, the three are together in direct opposition to the "time-pleaser" Malvolio, who is portrayed with wonderfully rigid and exaggeratedly proper manners by the tall, lean, and angular Timothy Davies. "Sick with self love," Malvolio is the model of propriety, and the foil of the revelers. Although the moral stolidity that prompts the practical joke played upon him is well-deserved, Malvolio's incarceration as a lunatic and subsequent torment are decidedly not. The revelers are cruelly abusive, again to excess, even Feste, although it is the clown who finally frees Malvolio.
Textually, Malvolio, wounded in the "joke" especially by Olivia, claims he will be "revenged on the whole pack of you," and exits in a huff. Director Pennington, however, allows Malvolio on-stage revenge with an added final scene that is on the surface comic, but essentially quite ominous; Malvolio is "a kind of Puritan" who represents ill will and embodies the spirit of moral bigotry that closed Shakespearean playhouses. Pennington's decision to restore Malvolio to the stage considerably darkens - literally and figuratively - the very happy ending of Twelfth Night, which includes kisses between the couples and a moving embrace between the reunited Viola and Sebastian. Malvolio returns moments later in dramatic fashion, accompanied by a pair of brown-coated henchmen, stalking self-righteously through the audience from the rear of the theatre. They make their way on-stage menacingly, interrupting Feste's final song and intimidating him from the stage. Wordlessly, Malvolio achieves his revenge, diminishing the production's festive ending by snapping his fingers in instruction to his henchmen to remove props and dismantle the set. The stage now bare, he finally turns upon the audience, glaring malevolently, clipboard in hand, and with a final sharp snap of his fingers, the lights are extinguished, eerily echoing Feste's earlier assertion that "there is no darkness but ignorance."
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.10, No.3, Summer 1992.