Good Night

Shakespeare keeps us laughing

by Bill Rodriguez

By William Shakespeare. Directed by Harland Meltzer.
At Colonial Theatre's Westerly Shakespeare In the Park, through July 27.

William Shakespeare, we have reason to suspect, was a wild man at a party. Rather than off in a corner sipping sack and mumbling sonnets, more likely he joined the rowdies pushing the harpsichord into the pool -- if such outlandish evidence as Twelfth Night, or What You Will is to be trusted.

In an age when courtliness could come on a little too strong, pretentiousness was a popular target. At a time when rank and status were everything, tales of switched roles and trans-class hanky-panky were a hoot. As Westerly's Colonial Theatre demonstrates in their annual Shakespeare In the Park offering, directed by Harland Meltzer, such matters are still funny enough to keep us laughing.

Amidst the moonlight and foliage, against the Wilcox Park pond, one of the Bard's most frivolous romantic comedies is getting a free (donation requested) performance by an Actors Equity cast. If the pacing sometimes flags and the text remains remorselessly untrimmed, still one mother expressed surprise to me that her 12-year-old son remained as entranced as if by Nintendo. And if a couple of the comic roles are cast for the right physical types rather than for comic skills, still there are several right-on performances to applaud.

Colonial sets it in the Roaring '20s, to convey a sense of boozy aristocratic luxuriance. Orsino (Michael Janes) is the Duke of Illyria, in love with Olivia (Lisa Bostnar), a countess who soon will have second thoughts about her impulsive and melodramatic vow to mourn the recent death of her brother for seven years. She isn't in love with Orsino but immediately falls for the page he sends with amorous supplications. That young gentleman goes by the name Cesario but actually is Viola (Tamara Scott), shipwrecked penniless on the Illyrian shores and badly needing the work. Viola, however, is quickly smitten by her courtly boss. Eventually, for a last-act complication, she thinks that her twin brother Sebastian (Mark Irish), whom she looks like with her hair cut short and in male togs, drowned in the storm that cast her there. Of course, mistaken identity is as inevitable as the likelihood that all the lovers will ultimately be joined with the objects of their affections.

Wonderful conflicts ensue, mostly around characters trying to improve their station in life. Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Ed Franklin) is courting the young Olivia despite his age and dim wits. He's always good for another round of drinks, so Sir Toby Belch (Matt Conley), Olivia's uncle, latches on. Drunken carousing and delicious low humor follow. Clever servant Maria (an antic Catrina Ganey) devises a good joke: forging a love letter in her mistress Olivia's hand and leaving it for her steward Malvolio to find and think that she wants him to woo her. Add to that bunch of clowns a conspiring servant, Fabian (David Schmittou), and court jester, Feste (Kevin Elden), and much fun is afoot. Elden, a dynamo of physical devices, pulls the heaviest comedic load. He turns into a whirling dervish of activity at one point, when he alternates the voices and personas of a southern evangelist and a country parson.

This was the last of Shakespeare's great comedies, and by then he'd had plenty of practice with all the tricks of the Elizabethan laff riot trade. Diarist Samuel Pepys called it "one of the weakest" plays he'd ever seen, probably because of its hit-you-over-the-head repetitions so that the groundlings got the running gags. The most excess of this sort are the reminders that we are going to see Malvolio in cross-gartered yellow stockings. That scene is the hilarious high point of Twelfth Night, but less dutiful productions trim the set-up, and the sight-gag ends up punchier for it. Still, Olivia's love-struck servant remains a ludicrous sight as he flashes knobby knees and hideous forced smile. (The tacked-on '20s setting is in the way here, when his suit pants legs are unaccountably rolled up. It also intrudes later, when swords have to be handed out to tuxedoed combatants.) David Snizek gives Malvolio a wonderfully inflated John Barrymore carriage and diction; we'll forgive the scene anything.

The enjoyment in this production is in the occasional exchange that clicks. Olivia's internal tug-of-war, maddened by lust but constrained by her station. Malvolio's oily rectitude. Even the incidental character of ship captain Antonio (John Mahon), angered and saddened by a seeming betrayal by Sebastian. Shakespeare, excesses and all, sure knew how to show us a good time.