Summary 
Stylishly modernized Twelfth Night with Viola and Sebastian shipwrecked in Illyria with its white-faced, self-absorbed inhabitants. A putting-green set surrounded with impressionistic paintings of greenery captures the romantic antics and social satire. Played in repertory with the same cast in a musical production, this show is reconstructed in symphonic movements to good effect.
Design
Directed by Karin Coonrod. Set by Todd Rosenthal. Costumes by P.K. Wish. Lights by Christopher Akerlind. Sound and compositions by Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman.
Cast
Lance Baker (Orsino), Kate Fry (Viola), Bradley Mott (Toby), Barbara Robertson (Maria), Yasen Peyankov (Aguecheek), Larry Neumann, Jr. (Feste), Carey Peters (Olivia), John Reeger (Malvolio), Christian Kohn (Antonio), Guy Adkins (Sebastian).
Analysis
Chicago's Court Theatre presents its modernized Twelfth Night in rotating repertory, alternating performances with the Chekhov-inspired Piano within the same space and with the same ensemble cast. The physical demands upon the cast are extraordinary, with eight performances of the plays - four each - every week, but the ensemble boasts some of the finest performers in Chicago.
Karin Coonrod gives Twelfth Night a symphonic structure: three movements consisting of eight scenes followed by a three-minute interlude, six scenes followed by a fifteen-minute intermission, then the four-scene conclusion. The structure imbues the production with a musical framework that accelerates the pace toward its schizophrenic - both happy and unhappy - conclusion.
Coonrod makes up her modern Illyrians in bloodless white-face, subtly commenting on Olivia and Malvolio as they subjugate their natural emotions, as well as criticizing the remainder of Olivia's household for their distortion of emotions in drunkenness and revelry. The zombie-like pallor is striking, with the audience seeing the Illyrians - including the ostentatious Orsino and his retinue - just as the full-blooded Viola encounters them. Only Feste, a seedy and embittered vagabond, is not vampirish: Feste's face is half whitened and half normal, an ideal physical depiction for an Illyrian so critical of his own culture. Feste's homelessness is both physical and psychological.
Feste smokes cigarettes and begs for pocket change, drifting like a vagrant across the stage, into the audience, and throughout the theatre. He chats with patrons before the show begins, even sitting beside them, and he hustles audience-members back into the theatre and into their seats following the brief interlude.
The stage, an eighteen-foot in diameter green circular disk, resembles an elevated golf-game putting green. Metallic steps lead to hand-railed scaffolds on either side of the stage and behind the audience. Blue florescent bulbs are lined horizontally upstage, and a framed square of azure sky shimmers overhead. Over two dozen three-dimensional paintings of shrubs and greenery rest on wheeled frame-stands in a half-circle around the stage. The row of paintings continues on wall frames behind the audience, effectively joining the audience to the action by encircling them with the actors in the performance space.
The predominance of the color green in the scenic design and the costume choices suggests the emotional immaturity as well as the excessive wealth of Illyria's too-idle rich. During the intermission - following Antonio's arrest - Feste strolls the perimeter of the theatre, pushing and pulling at the paintings of greenery so each is cockeyed and askew.
Orsino's court appears like early 1960s London Mods in ruffled pinks and browns, wearing sunglasses and following the Duke like pop-star groupies. Orsino's exaggerated emotions reveal this beatnik Duke as comically vain and self-indulgent, and he imitates Elvis Presley in a bent-knee, tip-toed manic ruffling of his hair. The play begins with Orsino sprawled upon an electric-blue chaise lounge, and he carelessly tosses a volume of poetry over his head for, "if music be the food of love, play on." His retinue rolls their eyes and exchange knowing glances at his extravagant angst, and a bored-looking "harpist" plays occasional tones on a hand-held xylophone.
The lovely Olivia is as self-absorbed as Orsino, changing from funereal somberness in 1.5, veiled and clad in black, to become a joyous, colorfully-dressed schoolgirl-in-love prancing after Cesario in 3.1. Her frequent lapses into rapid-fire explanations are comical descents into impatient self-indulgence.
Olivia's household includes a perpetually hung-over, obese Toby Belch and a sassy and sexy Maria. Coonrod extends the scenes of drunkenness and slurred singing a little too long - a little carousing goes a long way - and the rapacious humor and mean-spirited plotting render the drunkards as unsympathetic as the hypocritical narcissists that are their royalty. The choices make it difficult to like and impossible to respect the Illyrian characters, but in turn enhance the nobility of - and the audience's sympathy for - the shipwrecked Viola and Sebastian.
Aguecheek is played as an amiable idiot, easily convinced he's a wonderful dancer, a formidable fighter, and a romantic contender for Olivia's hand. His pathos-inflected portrayal contrasts with the others' bitter resistance of the hard fact that "there will be no more cakes and ale." The sight-gag Aguecheek wears a badly cut green suit with a bow tie and top hat. His drunken "hold thy peace" song and kick-dance with Feste and the gaseous Toby becomes an extended audience sing-along and clap-along until the house lights come up with Malvolio's sudden appearance behind the audience.
The belligerent Malvolio, with his booming baritone of disapproval, is quick to be deceived into vulnerable puppy love. Black-bearded and slender, wearing floor-length black clerical robes, he is a model of frowning puritanical propriety until he blossoms into moronic smiles and garish yellow stockings. The others easily delude him with the 2.5 letter scene, hiding behind picture frames to eavesdrop, then spinning the frames to confront the vainglorious Malvolio with a series of mirrors. They share high-fives in celebration of their trickery, and Malvolio foolishly approaches "fair cruelty" Olivia with suggestive hip thrusts, then clutches at her feet in desperation, leaving her without a shoe when she finally tugs free to exit and pursue Cesario. The 4.2 madness scene furthers the production's color symbology, as the disgraced steward wears a green dunce cap and is bound with a yellow-strapped straight-jacket.
Kate Fry provides the production with a refreshing presence within the alternations of bloated intemperance and rigid asceticism of Illyria. Her appealing Viola is forthright even in the dishonesty of her disguise, and the sympathetic performance bolsters the rest of the production. First seen bare-footed with long hair in the shoulderless, seawater-dripping rags of a dress, Fry re-appears in short-cropped hair and pencil mustache, wearing a dark suit with white shirt and thin tie. Like her brother Sebastian - played with confident earnestness as well as underlying grief - she passes through Illyria without the usual white-face makeup, but her appearance and dismay at the Illyrians seems natural. Fry slouches and shuffles, frequently stuffing her hands into her hip pockets, passing for an assured Illyrian until she breaks into desperate asides, directly addressing the audience.
Coonrod's production is replete with interesting ideas - including a shadow-puppet pantomime of the opening shipwreck beneath billowing blue streamers - and there is ample humor: the 2.3 revels are performed with party hats, masks, noise-makers, and streamers before strings of Christmas lights; Feste, lacking a goblet, pours liquor into his hat and drinks from it before emptying it over his head; the feisty but diminutive Sebastian is tossed over Toby's shoulder during their 4.1 fistfight; and later in 4.1, Sebastian and Olivia do not just share a kiss, they grope and grapple with each other like salacious teenagers, clumsily moaning and cooing their way off stage, through the audience, and out of the theatre.
As the posturing of the idle wealthy gives way to a seemingly happy ending, the laconic Feste's closing dirge - "hey nonny nonny" - reminds that the twelfth night of Christmas has passed and the extremism of puritanical righteousness looms. As the house lights come up, the rest of the cast freeze mid-stride in their graceful exit, smiles faltering from their faces. Feste sits at the edge of the stage upon his suitcase, wipes the clownish make-up from his face and tosses his paper money to the air. Then, in an ominous crash of thunder, Malvolio returns to vow vengeance, and the play concludes on an unhappy note.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.19, No.4, Fall 2001.