THEATER

Classice Stage Company
Twelfth Night, or What You Will - William Shakespeare

"Shipwrecked on the island of Illyria, Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated, each fearing the other lost to the sea. Viola disguises herself as a boy and wades into a complex romantic triangle with Duke Orsino and the Countess Olivia. New York’s innovative Fiasco Theater brings their hallmark style and expansive imagination to one of Shakespeare’s funniest and poetic comedies."

Review: Finding Serenity in a Tempest-Tossed ‘Twelfth Night’

By BEN BRANTLEYDEC. 14, 2017

Fiasco Theater — whose affable “Twelfth Night, or What You Will” opened on Thursday night at the Classic Stage Company — is to the thickets of Shakespeare what your favorite high school math teacher was to the complexities of calculus. I’m talking about those easygoing, enthusiastic guides who take you by the hand and show you that what you thought was impenetrable not only makes sense, but might also be improbably pleasurable.

This company first won my heart in 2011 with a production of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline,” in which a cast of six (assisted by a bedsheet and a trunk) brought light and sparkle to a plot-congested romance. Its streamlined “Measure for Measure,” one of Shakespeare’s most notorious “problem plays,” was such a forthright and forgiving portrait of people’s paradoxical natures that you left it asking, “So what was the problem?”

Fiasco also coaxed an effervescent, youthful sweetness from the sour inconstancy of the lovers in “The Two Gentleman of Verona,” an early comedy. And, taking a vacation from the canon, it turned the dense Sondheim-Lapine musical “Into the Woods” into a blithe celebration of storytelling that crossed the Atlantic for a warmly received London run.

Fiasco’s “Twelfth Night,” directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld, is full of the troupe’s signature traits. These include minimal scenery and costumes, spirited musical interludes (with cast members doubling as musicians) and a winningly prosaic way of delivering thickly poetic dialogue, as if that were the way everybody talked these days.

As usual, the performers let the story tell itself, without excessive interpretive psychology. And they never pander or patronize with the big annotative gestures or frenzied slapstick common to the “Shakespeare is fun” school of acting. The show is steeped in a daylight lucidity, making it an ideal introduction to “Twelfth Night” for theatergoers unacquainted with this play.

For the rest of us, this production offers a perfectly agreeable two-and-a-half hours of stage time. But the electricity I associate with Fiasco is oddly lacking, as is the sense of unexpected revelation. The show as a whole feels like a clean-lined sketch for a fuller work to come.

Featuring a nautically themed wooden set by John Doyle, the artistic director at Classic Stage and a dab hand at eloquent minimalism himself, this “Twelfth Night” begins promisingly with a sea storm worthy of “The Tempest.” This particular raging squall, evoked by swaying, chantey-singing performers, is the one that separates the look-alike brother and sister Viola (Emily Young) and Sebastian (Javier Ignacio) and sets into motion a tale of confused identities.PhotoIt’s a well-chosen entry point into a comic universe in which sea imagery, and the sense of an ordering oceanic force, abounds. And because the cast members speak with such clarity and naturalness, you may find yourself newly aware of references to a threatening but ultimately providential water-hemmed world in which “tempests are kind and salt waves fresh in love.”

As always with Fiasco, you never doubt that everyone involved understands the play from the inside out and is working as a team to convey that shared appreciation. Monologues are often addressed directly to the audience, with a chummy air that stops short of condescending jokiness. The generous suggestion here is that we — the theatergoers — are a crucial part of creating the fantasy before us.

But “Twelfth Night” is one of the most frequently performed works in the canon. I have seen at least five versions during the past five years, including the glorious Shakespeare’s Globe production out of London that starred Mark Rylance as the Countess Olivia. So I approach each new production of it with particularly high standards, hoping to see a beloved kaleidoscopic work (and my favorite Shakespeare comedy) from yet another freshly arranged perspective.

Fiasco’s house acting style might be described as one of instructive transparency, in which flamboyant performances never get in the way of the textual meaning. This works beautifully with a thorny enigma like “Measure for Measure,” where concentrating too much on the characters’ warped psychology can strand you in a Freudian wilderness.

“Twelfth Night,” though, cries out for more layered and intricate portraiture. It is, above all, about people living in disguise — not only to others, but also to themselves — and gradually uncovering their essential natures. And no matter what the title character of “Hamlet” famously advised to the traveling players in that tragedy, simply speaking the speech doesn’t tap into the emotional riches on offer in “Twelfth Night.”

The production’s leading ladies, who wear their feelings closest to the surface, are easiest to identify with here. Ms. Young is an earnest and honest Viola, who dresses as a page named Cesario to navigate the unknown kingdom of Illyria; and Jessie Austrian is a commanding and clever Olivia, the countess who unwittingly falls in love with this lass in lad’s clothing.

On the other hand, where is the bereavement that colors the lives of these women, each of whom believes she has lost a brother? For the play’s gloriously symmetrical happy ending to have full impact, you need to feel the anxiety of characters who hardly trusted in such a denouement ever arriving.

The directors double as actors here, with Mr. Brody as the self-infatuated Count Orsino and Mr. Steinfeld as an especially tuneful Feste, a clown in Olivia’s court, who delivers his melancholy ballads in the style of a James Taylor-esque troubadour. Paul L. Coffey is the puritanical Malvolio, Olivia’s steward; Andy Grotelueschen is her hedonistic cousin, Sir Toby Belch; and Paco Tolson is his dimwitted companion in revelry, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, with Tina Chilip as Toby’s girlfriend (and fellow conniver in Malvolio-baiting), Maria.

You may note that I didn’t characterize these cast members beyond, well, the characters they portray. That’s because the performances match those basic descriptions without adding much to them. Viola speaks often of not being what she appears to be. But in this “Twelfth Night” what you see is more or less what you get, even when people are pretending to be what they are not.