Summary 
A brilliantly directed, musically lush comedy with insights into vanity and love and emotions and game-playing, deftly imbued with memorable flourish after memorable flourish. An onstage band a la Sergeant Pepper plays cello and violins, guitar and bass, a variety of brass, even an onstage drum kit, underscoring a delightful series of overlapping romances within a superb overall entertainment.
Design
Directed by Des McAnuff. Designed by Debra Hanson. Lighting designed by Michael Walton. Compositions by Des McAnuff and Michael Roth. Musical direction by Michael Roth. Sound design by Todd Charlton. Choreography by Nicola Pantin.
Cast
Brian Dennehy (Toby Belch), Stephen Ouimette (Andrew Aguecheek), Tom Rooney (Malvolio), Andrea Runge (Viola), Sara Topham (Olivia), Ben Carlson (Feste), Trent Pardy (Sebastian), Cara Ricketts (Maria), Mike Shara (Orsino), Michael Blake (Antonio), Juan Chioran (Fabian), Timothy D. Stickney (Captain).
Analysis
Des McAnuff's Twelfth Night is performed on a glimmering purple and blue marble stage within the Festival Theatre of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Upstage space is framed by giant shards of fallen marble as if an enormous broken mirror. The staging underscores the vanity within the elite of Illyria, especially the self-indulgence of Orsino and Olivia. McAnuff imbues his production with a magnificent score - most of it original and some reworked from a previous staging - invigorating Shakespeare's lyrics with a range of music from folk to rock and recurring melodic motifs that delight, perhaps especially the seven hundred young Canadian students within the audience for this performance. McAnuff cleverly stresses another major theme with a repetition of the play's most famous passage - "if music be the food of love ... play on" - sung by several heart-broken characters: first, Viola, in a disordered 1.2; then Orsino in 1.1, a tall and good-looking man in a brocade jacket, sitting atop his piano listening to Feste's music with an aching heart; Antonio in 2.1, wearing the dark wool, boots and cap and leather jacket and backpack of a dockworker, sighing at the departure of Sebastian; and in 3.1, the beautiful Olivia, barely able to comply at "time to smile again" but gamely pursuing a man who is not what he seems, resting her head in Cesario's lap then sprawling to the stage when "he" moves quickly away. The characters croon the words longingly, backed by swaying back-up singers and on-stage musicians, each musician attired in a colorfully glittering marching band uniform much like the Beatles' 1940s-era Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The musicians play or vocalize almost constantly, remaining onstage to observe as a chorus as well as to interact as a house band. They are led by Ben Carlson's Feste, a memorably wry commentator but also a wonderfully talented singer and musician who resembles something of a cross between wild gray-haired Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and an early 1990s Seattle grunge street-rocker in boots and flannel and torn plaid jeans. The band plays amid music-video staples like stage fog, strobes, and frequent shifts of multicolored lighting, swaying and playing through an extravagant musical opening that features multiple guitarists, Feste playing bass guitar, a drummer on a pedestal with small kit, plus two trumpeters and a violinist.
McAnuff's conception for Twelfth Night is remarkable, as he adds to the vibrant musical score with a series of colorfully memorable but thematically connected images that subtly criticize the privileged vanity and narcissism. Andrea Runge's plucky Viola arrives in a lacy black gown 1.2, rescued from shipwreck within a small skiff. The narrow vessel glides along the stage as if truly within water, piloted by a sailor aft manning an outboard motor and the Captain up front, peering into the darkness ahead with the aid of a large flashlight. The band remains motionless as Viola emerges onto Illyria, but the drummer softly hits a cymbal to punctuate the Captain's mention of Olivia, and the band is joined by a 1970s "Imagine"-era John Lennon look-a-like in white suit and shoes, wearinglong straight brown hair and granny glasses, playing the piano theme "if music be the food of love." McAnuff sets subsequent scenes within posh Illyria, but with visual emphasis on entitlement and decadent leisure, especially game-playing, with 1.3 staged upon a putting green, 1.4 within baseball batting cages, and 3.4 at a tennis court.
Film actor Brian Dennehy emerges to applause 1.3, entering from downstage left in pursuit of a bouncing chip-shot golf ball that has gone long of a center stage flag and cup. Dennehy portrays Toby Belch as a dissipated long-ago frat-boy who is pushing eighty years of age, attired in cap and vest with necktie along with argyle socks and puffy shorts like a golfer from the 1930s. White-haired and burly, he sports big bushy-gray sideburns, and once joined by caddie Maria with his clubs in a golf-bag slung over her shoulder, he inhales deeply to blow his ball closer to the cup, then painstakingly lines up a putt, his grip dropping lower and lower, until he finally just picks up the ball and drops it in the hole. While Dennehy's Toby records his score with a pencil stub and Maria toys with her puffy afro, Stephen Ouimette as Andrew Aguecheek arrives with a screech of burning rubber, driving from upstage within a covered golf cart and coming to a lurching stop center stage. Dennehy and Ouimette together are another delight as Belch and Aguecheek, belching with drink and cheeky with humor. Dennehy's Toby thrusts his hips as he implores his friend to "assail" Olivia, and Ouimette's Andrew rests his putter on his shoulder but hits himself in the back of the head with it, stammering to Maria when faced with her ample cleavage: "what is your breast...chest...jest?" The two men dance together, Andrew's Three Stooges soup-bowl haircut flopping as he does the "back break" as a hip-waggle moonwalk, and they exit upstage into deep purple light to spontaneous applause from the audience.
For 1.4 Runge's blonde Viola has donned a short haircut and a white linen suit as Cesario, appearing like a southern-U.S. male aristocrat as she watches Orsino remove his jacket and take a few practice swings in a batting cage. The onstage band sits and observes as well, following the crack of the bat as they all turn to watch a towering drive sail high over the audience. Runge's Viola is obviously enamored, and when she takes a turn with the bat, the upstage screen jerks and shimmers as if stopping a pitch she has missed. When she finally "connects," they all follow the ball - Orsino suitably impressed - and they applaud, but with the distant sound effect of bursting window glass, they exclaim and scatter from the stage. Finally, in 3.4 - to one of McAnuff's recurring melodies, penned with Michael Roth, who also serves as Musical Director - the now sprightly Olivia bounds across a tennis court, the stage divided by a long yellow net, a large basket of yellow tennis balls downstage. She and her ladies-in-waiting wear tennis white, and they cower as Malvolio appears, looking not just a little insane with his vapid smile and steely eyes, wearing black with a big white Elizabethan collar and cross-gartered yellow stockings. When he leaps the net, they scream and rush stage right, watching in horror as Malvolio kisses a black-gloved finger and reaches toward Olivia, then seizes her tennis racket to visualize the greatness thrust upon him. The ladies life the net to facilitate Olivia's escape stage left, then lower and snap the net back into place as Malvolio crosses mid-stride, catching him solidly between the legs.
McAnuff elicits a series of flawless performances - Sara Topham and Mike Shara as Olivia and Orsino are young and gorgeous, each showing rays of intelligence and feeling beneath their stylishly selfish exteriors - and while Tom Rooney's stern Malvolio is the comedic foil - kneeling piously but pompously beside Olivia, dressed in a kind of Puritan black for the 1.5 funeral, or scurrying to her side when summoned - Dennehy and Ouimette nearly steal the show. But the best performance - wickedly droll expressions and whip-crack remarks plus superlative musicianship and singing - comes from Ben Carlson's grunge-rock Feste. During the late-night 2.3, an open two-door refrigerator descends from the fly like a drunkard chandelier to illuminate the stage, now Olivia's expansive kitchen, complete with wet bar and sink and appliances. Carlson's Feste joins Toby, with his empty whiskey glass, and Andrew, wielding a guitar and a wine bottle. While Carlson's Feste sings "Hold Thy Piece" the three play rhythm - Feste with spoons, Andrew with hand-claps, Toby with finger-snaps - as the chorus of the drinking song suddenly becomes a dance routine with video-moves from the band members upstage, and pulsating lights give the feel of a cable-TV music video. The band stomps their feet as the characters onstage begin pounding rhythm upon pots and pans, and when Maria stops them briefly - "hold thy peace!" - Andrew pops some bread into a toaster and they resume the raucous singing and dancing. When they are finally halted by the malevolent Malvolio in pajamas and bed-head hair, the toast pops up to punctuate his shouted words, and Andrew himself puts an exclamation point on Toby's speech regarding cakes and ale by leaning over to vomit in the kitchen sink. The scene is brilliantly conceived and wonderfully performed, but McAnuff is not yet finished: as Maria runs water into the sink, she conceives her plan to humiliate Malvolio - Toby's "I smell a device!" is answered by Andrew's "I have it in my nose, too" - but the door bell rings in the distance, and her plans are delayed as Andrew answers the door and brings the John Lennon look-a-like into the kitchen as a late-night pizza deliverymen. "Lennon" unzips a vinyl pizza bag, delivers a cardboard pizza box, accepts his tip, and exits happily upstage right. McAnuff follows immediately with more songs for 2.4, Viola crooning "Present Laughter" to Orsino downstage, her longing and ache matched by Carlson's Feste, who strums an acoustic guitar and sings "Come Away Death" in moody purple light and somber piano chord accompaniment. During the moving song, Olivia slowly emerges onstage, now in a creamy white gown rather than funereal black, and a servant girl slides a flower into her air, Olivia certainly a part of the longing and unrequited love if not an actual participant in the scene.
McAnuff's directorial hand is clever and sure, providing a quick pace for a lengthy 190-minute production, and he shows a deft hand at enlivening scenes and at layering motifs. For example, the relatively minor role of Fabian is played by a talented singer in Juan Chioran, a booming baritone who belts out a key song, dressed in a narrowly cut dark suit with a bow tie and heavy black glasses so he bears an uncanny resemblance to Buddy Holly. Dennehy's Toby enters with exaggerated slowness 1.5, either hopelessly hung over or still poisoned drunk, belching into Olivia - "a plague on those pickled herring" - and muttering, "I defy lechery," while giving a flirty little finger-wave to Maria across the stage. The 3.2 plotting scene is set within the indulgence of a sauna steam bath, Toby and Andrew by Fabian, all three wrapped in regal lavender towels, although Andrew's robe is tied beneath his chin as if worn by a woman. When they inflame Andrew into proposing a duel with Cesario, Ouimette's Andrew seizes a poker and wields it like a sword, savagely thrusting it at invisible targets across the stage until his robe loosens and falls, revealing the un-knightly bottom. Ouimette's squinting glare at the front row as he re-ties his bathrobe nearly brings down the house. But McAnuff never loses sight of the main plot - a brother sundered from his sister - and in 2.2 when Malvolio enters to "return" a ring from Olivia, he follows after Sebastian toward upstage left, and when Runge's Viola appears in an identical suit upstage right, Rooney's Malvolio does a slow double take, but changes course. And McAnuff concludes the play's long first half with Runge's Viola downstage right, the band playing between her and Sebastian upstage left, brother and sister near one another but peering worriedly in opposite directions.
McAnuff's second half begins with a spotlight on a microphone stand at center stage, then the sudden rush of upbeat music as Feste sings a clap-along rock-and-roll version of an Elizabethan ballad for Olivia, who is thrilled and coming alive downstage right. Singers take turns with verses - Chioran's Fabian a particular long-legged standout - and the rock-video stylings are intended as a tribute to the beauteous Olivia, guitarists giving her rock-god leaps, windmill flourishes, even knee slides. The rest of the band play with showman moves, a keyboard player banging on his piano, but they give way as Olivia responds with a brass-heavy love song, her ladies behind her as swaying backup singers, Carlson's Feste beside her playing a thumping bass guitar and concluding the song with a rumbling, plaintively low note from his instrument. Later, in 4.2, McAnuff eases the tone of the potentially disturbing taunting of the imprisoned Malvolio with the use of humor and music. Carlson's Feste climbs aboard a wheeled ladder with a platform and dons a long glittering black robe for his appearance as the fifteen-foot-tall Spaniard Sir Topaz. Carlson booms at Malvolio with an exaggerated accent and an amplified voice, the Puritan rising to center stage from a trap, kneeling within a clear glass cage, his hair wild and his eyes frightened, wearing but not bound by a straight jacket, the pink letter supposedly from Olivia on the floor in front of him. Toby hands Carlson's Feste his bass guitar, and Feste straddles Malvolio's cage like a rock star in concert, playing a booming bass introduction into a raucous hard rock anthem - "she loves another better than me" - that stops the show to wild applause, finishing with Carlson downstage center for a dazzlingly soulful harmonica solo.
Rooney's Malvolio holds his own within all the show-stopping scenes that McAnuff orchestrates. At 2.5 he arrives upstage but postures like a political dignitary, pretending to shake people's hands and greet them, pointing out favorites in the crowd and offering camera-worthy poses. When he stands over the pink letter, he fails to even notice it, but applies a quick coat of lip balm, then doffs his jacket for a regimen of push-ups. When he finally picks up the Maria-faked love letter, he paces left and right across the stage, so Toby and Andrew and Fabian are constantly on the move, scuttling along in the gutters to keep close and eavesdrop. At one point they shift all the way around to stage right, leaving Ouimette's distracted Andrew alone upstage left so he must leap onstage and run like a girl to them behind Malvolio's rigid back. Rooney's Malvolio poses like Hamlet with Yorick's skull - "to be...Count" - then kisses a finger and pretends to touch it to Olivia, and when he offers a big smile supposedly at Olivia's suggestion, it resembles a particularly heinous gas pain. After he humiliates himself with the yellow stockings 3.4, Toby and Fabian arrive in dapper tuxedoes along with Maria, Fabian covering his face with a handkerchief as though Malvolio suffers from a contagious airborne disease. Rooney's Malvolio slaps Fabian's hand away when he reaches to take a urine sample, and after Maria defends herself by making a crucifix from two crossed tennis rackets, Dennehy's now-pious Toby takes Malvolio's hands and kneels to pray for his soul.
McAnuff repeatedly demonstrates a lively flair, making even small scenes interesting. In 3.3, Antonio makes Sebastian aware of the dangers of Illyria amid thunder sound effects and strobe-blinks of lightning, both men cowering from the rain as Antonio shields Sebastian beneath an umbrella while ominous-looking businessmen in black suits, briefcases, hats and umbrellas rush past them from all directions. When Toby reads Andrew's "vinegar" letter demanding a duel, Ouimette's silly Andrew struts downstage, striking poses and looking angry, mouthing the words Toby reads. When he exits, Dennehy's Toby tears the letter, then blows a kiss to Maria, who pretends to catch it. McAnuff even implies deeper feelings between Feste and Olivia: when she embraces him 1.5 they linger face-to-face in each other's arms as if about to kiss. After she exits, Malvolio stopping the ladies-in-waiting from giggling with a curt snap of his fingers, Feste remains sadly on his knees. And the 3.2 supposed duel is a triumph of nicely understated physical comedy. Chioran's Fabian orchestrates the epic non-battle, mopping Viola's brow and preventing her from running away, then suddenly barking instructions at them so they both scream out in surprise. When Fabian removes the blunts from the sword points, Andrew's hands start to shake and then he gags and lurches as if about to retch, dropping his sword and covering his eyes.
The 5.1 concluding scene plays with an impressive fluidity, Orsino and Viola arriving downstage right, later halting their exit in surprise to Olivia's cry of "husband, stay!" When Sebastian emerges upstage right amid all the confusion and arguing, everyone becomes silent and turns to gawk at him in shock. He and Viola circle each other - Olivia's "most wonderful!" drawing a hearty laugh from the audience - staring and fearful, yet hoping. Carlson's Feste joins the group, giving a double-take then crossing his eyes and raising his hands as brother and sister embrace. After a big romantic kiss from Orsino for Viola - the school-age audience responding like the live audience at a Hollywood sit-com taping: "ooooh!" - Malvolio is returned in his untied straight jacket and reminded how "the whirlygig of time brings in his revenges." Fittingly, Carlson's Feste leads a final clap-along song with the entire band playing behind him - "hey ho the wind and the rain" - before Orsino returns with Viola in a beautiful gown, to yet more applause.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.30, No.2, Summer 2012.