12th Night

Subtitle “What you will,” c.f. Act I, scene v, line 107.

At the State Theater, see listing for details.

“If you be mad, be gone, if you have reason be brief. ‘Tis not the time of moon with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue.” (Olivia, I.v.195-7)

Notes, culled from Bloom’s text:

“Cheerfully secular, like almost all of Shakespeare, the play of “what you will” makes no reference to Twelfth Night.” (Bloom, page 229)

“The hidden heart of Twelfth Night lies in Shakespeare’s seriocomic rivalry with Ben Jonson, whose comedy of humors is being satirized throughout.” (Bloom, page 228)

“… Viola prophesies her own imaginary sister in her own later dialogue with Orsinio.” (Bloom, page 233)

“Olivia, properly played, can dazzle us with her authority, and with her erotic arbitrariness, but no audience conceives for her the affection it accords to Viola, disconcerting as Viola turns out to be.” (Bloom, page 235)

“The genius of Twelfth Night is Feste, the most charming of all Shakespeare’s fools, and the only sane character in a wild play.” (Bloom, page 244)

Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. NY: Riverhead, 1998.

The Star-studded DVD version, released in 1996 is amazing. But as I was watching Trevor Nunn’s movie version, excellent movie version, I realized, as I hit the pause button, I figured out that the screen play was based on the play, but that movie didn’t exactly follow all the scenes, plus there were a few lines cut.

(Not that this doesn’t happen a lot in movie versions, like most Hamlets, Henry V and Midsummer Night’s Dream, to point out a few.)

However, the movie version, why I didn’t see this on the big screen, I don’t know, but that version is astounding. Plus, a perfect love story for Valentine’s day – when I watched it first.

See, Viola is a in love with the duke Orsino, who is in love with Olivia, who is in love with Viola, only Olivia thinks Viola is Ceasario. Malvolio thinks he loves Olivia, but he’s just foil for Sir Toby Belch and friends. It’s a very crazy set-up. Sword fights and fisticuffs, shipwreck and mistaken identity, plus, of course, a little gender-bending. Add to that, the idea that a girl gets to be a guy for a little while, and as such, she (as a he) gets to hear our (as a male) side of the story. Confused? They live happily ever after. Except for Malvolio, who wears he’ll be revenged upon the pack of them.

Line I want to remember?

At the State Theater:
The heart-breaking note is that the play’s audience was barely there. One of Shakespeare’s most amusing plays, a really fine production, and so sparse an attendance. I’ve already got tickets to see it again – it’s that good. Almost embarrassing for Austin, with what should be a lively theater scene, for such an opening night to be thinly populated with patrons.

The dramaturge introduced herself and noted that this was the first performance in front of a live audience. Plus it’s the first union between the State Theater’s group (I forget the name) and the UT (something acting) department.

Perusing the program, I found out that Viola is 1) from McAllen, TX, and 2) a graduate acting student. Plum role, as Viola. Cherry role. Whatever, some kind of delicious, ripe fruit. The rest of the cast was a mix, but it tended heavily towards graduate acting students, as the dramaturge’s brief intro mentioned, plus, she’s a grad student, too. I think she noted that the crew was still studying and taking notes, up to an hour before the show. Yeah, well, like the play, things are not what they seem to be.

I thought about it as a I walked back to the trailer park. I was looking for that one key, the hook, the single element that I could use to judge the performance. I figured it out: it’s a question, really, and the last time I was so moved by a Shakespeare play was an all-male cast of Midsummer Night’s Dream, wherein I fell in love with a character. Guy, it was a guy in a dress, and not a very pretty guy at that. I wasn’t in love with the guy, no, it was his character, and that’s what happened again at the show.

Did I fall in love with Viola, yet again?

This is the third or forth time I’ve seen this on stage, and about the third time I’ve fallen for Viola/Ceasario. By the very end of the play, I was swooning for Viola.

The opening scene wasn’t “by the book,” and seemed to borrow a little from someplace; however, once Malvolio hit the stage, his facial expressions, perhaps a little over-acted, started the flow, and from that point on, the hook was set.

So the first couple of minutes were a little rough, but by the time I wandered back in from the interval, the cast (I’m guessing crew, too) pulled together in a coherent unit. In short, wonderful show.

If I have one problem with the play, and as I’ve already quoted Bloom about the subject of Feste the Clown, it’s that he was dressed in a shabby linen suit. I understand that it was period piece, but just once, I’d like to see Feste in a jester’s cap. But that doesn’t matter, as the actor did a perfect job with the role.

The note from Bloom about Olivia, I’ll give the scholar his due on that, and the grad student playing Olivia did an excellent job. In part, though, to me, anyway, she was almost like a minor character.

Partly because I’d just gone through the text again, I was familiar with the play. Partly because I’d just watched a good movie version, I was familiar with the plot. Partly because I’d stopped at a favorite coffee shop on the way to the theater, I was in an excellent frame of mind. But most of all, after the stuttering first minutes, the cast themselves, and the crew, I’m sure, did a near perfect job of taking me away from Austin, off to some strange land, where everyone spoke in iambic pentameter, and they all lived happily ever after.

A really good show, and it’s impossible to tell the students from the professionals. Most near, anyway.

As some kind of a footnote, what Bloom alluded to about the play being a satire pointed at Jonson? The elements were even more clear in the play than in the movie version; hewing to the script, I’m sure.