Feste with the Finale
Twelfth Night
Photo by Dahlia Katz
Canadian Stage Dream in High Park/Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, directed and adapted by Gregory Prest, High Park Amphitheatre, closes Sept. 6.
There seems to be an unwritten rule that Canadian Stage productions at the High Park Amphitheatre should clock in at around 90 minutes. Thus, Gregory Prest’s adaptation of Twelfth Night, which he also directs, comes in at a brisk hour and a half.
Shakespeare purists should know by now that when they venture into High Park, they are not going to get the real deal. What Canadian Stage offers is Shakespeare for the masses — pared down, reimagined and designed to make the Bard accessible to the broadest possible audience.
What Prest has given us is delightful perfection, an utterly enjoyable production of Twelfth Night Lite. Anchoring the production are three stunning performances: Mike Shara as the irrepressible Sir Toby Belch, Olivia’s uncle, Steven Sutcliffe as Feste the clown, and Rick Roberts as Malvolio, Olivia’s self-important steward.
These three actors come from the world of the Shakespeare and Shaw festivals, and they give the production gravitas.
As well, each one gives a very interesting interpretation to the characters that they play, particularly Mike Shara as Sir Toby.
He is not the fat, sputtering slob. He is a real man, a sexy man. And his scenes with Olivia’s maid Maria, played by Navtej, Sandhu, are sexy. He’s a man with vim and vigour. When he manipulates Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Justin Otto), there’s menace in it, and harm in it, and evil in it. Shara brings a malevolent Sir Toby to the stage. It’s the most interesting and surprising characterization of Sir Toby that I’ve ever seen.
Stephen Sutcliffe’s Feste is almost a straight man. He may be the clown, but he is serious and stern and all-seeing and all-knowing. So it’s another grave, shall we say, performance that underlines the comedy. And Malvolio is not a fool. Rick Roberts plays him, again, very seriously and stern and compressed and rock-like so when he cracks, it’s a really hard wedge that opens up in the rock.
Therefore, these three very different but serious characters anchor the production so that the frivolity may carry on all around them. And that is exactly what happens in this production.
To understand Prest’s approach, we have to go back to the beginning. In his program notes, he reminds us why the play is called Twelfth Night.
Cesario and Orsino
Twelfth Night
Photo by Dahlia Katz
The Feast of the Epiphany marked the end of the twelve days of the Christmas celebrations in Elizabethan England, a time when the normal order was turned upside down. Servants could mock their masters, children their elders, men dressed as women and women as men, while masques, balls and feasting ruled the night. In other words, madness reigned.
Prest takes that idea of madness as his key to the play, and more particularly, the madness of love. He has written a new prologue for Feste in which the clown muses on the relationship between love and madness, establishing the theme that will colour everything that follows.
Prest also makes the very clever decision to reverse Shakespeare’s first two scenes and begin with the shipwreck.
Against Sim Suzer’s striking ship and enormous sail, a sea shanty gives way to a terrific storm, aided immeasurably by Logan Raju Cracknell’s lighting and Olivia Wheeler’s sound.
Out of the wreck emerges Viola, played by Caroline Toal, fresh from her success as Anne Shirley at Stratford last season. Believing her twin brother Sebastian drowned, Viola finds herself stranded in the strange land of Illyria, although a sailor gives her hope that Sebastian may have survived.
Only then does Prest take us to the court of Orsino (Farhang Ghajar) and Shakespeare’s famous opening thought about music being the food of love. Viola disguises herself as the young man Cesario and enters Orsino’s service, setting Shakespeare’s great romantic confusion into motion.
Reversing those opening scenes works extremely well. Rather than beginning with Orsino languishing over love, Prest begins with his heroine and the event that throws her into this topsy-turvy world.
And so the madness of love begins to circulate through Illyria. Viola, disguised as Cesario, carries Orsino’s declarations of love to Olivia, (Ghazal Azarbad) only to have Olivia fall in love with Cesario while Viola herself falls in love with Orsino. Malvolio is cruelly tricked into believing that Olivia loves him, while Sir Toby keeps the hapless Sir Andrew Aguecheek spending money and lingering in Illyria by encouraging his hopeless belief that he might somehow win Olivia for himself. Love, or the illusion of it, has made fools of virtually everyone.
Malvolio with Sir Toby and Maria
Twelfth Night
Photo by Dahlia Katz
There is a harder edge, however, to the scenes involving Sir Toby and Olivia’s maid Maria. Their treatment of Sir Andrew is not simply mischievous but deliberately cruel, made more disturbing by Mike Shara’s unusually calculating Sir Toby. In Prest’s topsy-turvy Illyria, the madness of love may generate the comedy, but it can also have victims.
Always there is music. Alicia Barban as Curio, a servant in Orsino’s court, is frequently on hand to provide accompaniment, as is Deivan Steele as Valentine. Shakespeare himself supplied Twelfth Night with several songs, most of them entrusted to Feste, but Prest finds opportunities to weave music throughout the production wherever he can, adding immeasurably to its beauty and delight.
Sim Suzer’s lovely set contributes to the enchantment, transforming Illyria into a place overflowing with flowers and vines. Into this pretty world eventually comes Sebastian (Ori Black), Viola’s supposedly drowned twin, along with Antonio (Ray Jacildo), the man who rescued him, and Prest drives the mistaken identities toward Shakespeare’s wonderful final reveal, when Viola and Sebastian at last appear together and the seemingly impossible confusion is resolved.
On the surface, Prest keeps the adventures of his four lovers light, romantic and frothy, but underneath them sit the darker figures of Sir Toby, Feste and Malvolio, who give the production its weight. And, as Prest points out in his program notes, Shakespeare gives the final word not to the lovers but to Feste. It is the clown who reminds us, after all the marriages and merriment, that not everyone in Illyria leaves happy.
In conclusion, this 90-minute adaptation is one of the strongest Dream in High Park productions in years. I loved every minute of it. The cast is uniformly strong, the unusual interpretations of familiar characters are fascinating, the musical interludes are delightful, and Prest’s direction is crisp and assured. In short, everything about this adaptation works.
Of course, I miss seeing the entire play. I am a Shakespeare purist at heart. Nonetheless, if we are going to have Twelfth Night Lite, I will happily take this one.
My admiration for Gregory Prest as both writer and director increases with every production of his that I see.