Summary 
Modernized to the 1920s and eschewing the looming Puritanical sense of darkness and ignorance, this Twelfth Night is an elegantly produced if straight-forward romantic comedy. Strong comic performances enhance a lighter-than-usual entertainment, with the highlight Feste a strolling Gypsy crooner.
Design
Directed by Antoni Cimolino. Set by Peter Hartwell. Costumes by Francesca Allow. Lights by Steven Hawkins. Compositions by Berthold Carriere. Sound by Jim Neil. Choreography by John Broome.
Cast
Sean Arbuckle (Orsino), James Blendick (Sir Toby), Domini Blythe (Maria), Peter Donaldson (Malvolio), Paul Dunn (Fabian), Michelle Giroux (Olivia), William Hutt (Feste), Robert King (Antonio), Tara Rosling (Viola), Michael Therriault (Sir Andrew), Nicolas Van Burek (Sebastian).
Analysis
Director Antoni Cimolino imbues the Stratford Festival's production of Twelfth Night with Greek balalaika music and dancing. Although the play remains set on the Adriatic coast, time moves forward to the post-World War One exuberance of the 1920s. Cimolino keeps the mood festive throughout, minimizing the potentially daunting Puritan aspects of Malvolio. As the story progresses, even the costumes become brighter, changing from the funereal gloom of Olivia's 1.5 household to colorful pastels, whites and creams.
Stratford veterans James Blendick and William Hutt steal the show as the appropriately named Sir Toby Belch and Feste the clown. Blendick's dissipated Toby wears long hair and a mustache, and he totters in open-necked shirt and an elaborate scarf-like tie. Prone to belching and expressions of dismay, his antics are crowd pleasers. In 3.4, Toby thwarts the supposedly possessed Malvolio with holy water and a Bible, then brandishes a crucifix and a clove of garlic while he quivers in exaggerated horror. Moments later, he towers between the frightened "Cesario" and Aguecheek, rolling his eyes and sighing as they close their eyes, turn their heads, and weakly "offer" their swords. Toby must use his own sword, striking at each of the whimpering combatants' weapons so they believe they are engaged in a duel.
At the play's start, Hutt's laconic Feste, a strolling Gypsy crooner, can be heard singing over the sounds of the storm, and he concludes the production by singing the same song in person. His droll wisdom seems out of synch with the other characters, as he begins his soulful 2.4 love song for Orsino moments after a doubled-over Aguecheek staggers off-stage retching, or when the others, moved by the 5.1 reunion of Viola and Sebastian, are jarred by his screeches as he begins "reading mad" Malvolio's letter of complaint.
Andrew Aguecheek, a walking sight gag, reveals his luggage as a portable wet bar and a record player turntable, and he provides "refreshment" as well as musical accompaniment for Toby's kick-dancing and his own badly failed attempt at the splits. Wearing a horrid yellow suit, Aguecheek is appalled at Maria's 2.5 comment that Olivia despises the color yellow, and when Cesario utters French to Olivia, he makes a mad scramble for a dictionary. When he attempts 3.2 to leave in a huff, his golf bag contains only a tennis racquet and a croquet mallet.
The Illyrian would-be lovers, Orsino and Olivia, are presented less as foolish and more as misguided, their emotions righted through the presence of Viola. Orsino begins the play in a drunken stupor, dancing at a local pub, and Olivia, in her 1.5 appearance, is dressed in black within a funeral march. Later she wears purple, then a white dress - "time to smile" - and the walls of her home, adorned with empty planters, become filled with colorful flowers after her union with Sebastian.
The squint-eyed austerity of Malvolio is played more for humor than for threat or malevolence. His pointed goatee and long black robe disguise him as an honorable cleric, but his behavior reveals him a buffoon. In 1.5, he stomps at a guitarist to stop the man from playing - and is defied by the strum of one last chord - and he shoves a female backgammon player off a center stage bench, then denies a shoe shine man a monetary tip. His 2.3 disruption of Toby and Aguecheek's dancing is far from an ominous Puritan presence, as Malvolio appears amid the audience wearing long johns and a corset, his hair held back in a clip. Malvolio uses a tablecloth to wrap himself when the revelers laugh at his appearance rather than fear his consternation.
During 2.5, the non-threatening Malvolio fantasizes marriage with Olivia, bowing so extravagantly he flips his toupee, and the planted letter comically sticks to his robe by its wax seal. He describes how his mistress writes an "O" and a "Q" - squatting to show how she makes "P" - and when he turns around at the word "revolve," Toby and the others must scramble from his line of sight. The slapstick provides a precursor to the Puritan's humiliation in 3.4, when he bawdily courts Olivia wearing yellow socks and garters, red pom-pommed shoes, and clenching a long-stemmed rose between his teeth. After he leads Olivia through a tango, she rebukes him, leaving him prone onstage with a cut from one of the rose's thorns.
Tara Rosling makes her Stratford debut as a decidedly feminine Cesario. To the sound of seagulls, four shipwrecked sailors carry her ashore, and she attempts to disguise herself as a man by wearing a tuxedo and attempting to smoke cigarettes. Her dismay at her own deceit increases the audience's sympathy for Viola, as she hugs Fabian in gratitude over his 3.4 offer to second her in the duel, and when she encounters Aguecheek in their panicked flight from one another, they embrace each other in a comic fellowship of fear. Her confession of love for Orsino comes in a lonely 1.4 spotlight as she stands in solitude upon the Festival Theatre's expansive stage.
Cimolino presents Sebastian and Viola's separation with interesting onstage cleverness. Early on, brother and sister are shown near a pub at the same time, and they walk past each other, but fail to notice one another because they are looking in different directions, and both demonstrate the identical flourish with their hats, jauntily flipping the hat from an extended arm to the top of their head. For 4.3, Sebastian appears shirtless in Olivia's balcony, exhausted but content, flowers all around him, and when Olivia arrives below with the minister, she of course wears a bright yellow dress.
Cimolino's production succeeds at presenting broadly comic entertainment, eschewing the more melancholy aspects of the end of the Christmas season - "there shall be no more cakes and ale" - as well as any commentary on the rise of the restrictive Puritans in England.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.20, No.2, Spring 2002.