Kris Unruh as Lady Olivia in Twelfth Night, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Eric Kozakiewicz

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“O spirit of love! How quick and fresh art thou,” declares a love-struck Duke, glancing heavenward in the early moments of Twelfth Night, the first of the two alternating plays (along with Romeo and Juliet) in this the 34th annual edition of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival.

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And, yes, the draped canvas big top ceiling of the Cristal Palace Spiegeltent does seem to be alive and breathing in response. Is it empathy for the humans below slipping and sliding through the mysteries of love in this open-ended cross-dressed, strangely multi-toned comedy?

Shakespeare has taken up residence for the summer in a “high fantastical” tent that (yay!) isn’t really like camping at all. The Cristal Palace Spiegeltent is a vintage hand-made “theatre” lined with precious wood, stained glass, bevelled mirrors. Outside it, Freewill has fashioned an urban garden (a nod to their al fresco roots), where Malachite Theatre plays with you en route to the show. And inside this magical space, in Twelfth Night (a fave of mine, as you might guess from the name of this theatre site), people will don disguises and unlace alter-egos they didn’t know they had; they’ll suddenly fall in love, bewilder themselves, confuse everyone around them.

Kris Unruh and Christina Nguyen in Twelfth Night, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Eric Kozakiewicz.

Amanda Goldberg’s high-spirited production leans into the light side of Shakespeare’s bewitching gender-fluid dark/light comedy. It puts on its party clothes on the beautiful wood keyhole stage (designer: Stephanie Bahniuk) that we get to surround on three sides — at close range since there are only 220 seats. And it sings and dances, borrowing its fulsome supply of music, played live by the characters, from the pop repertoire of REM, Radiohead, the Police (sound designer: Aaron Macri) — instead of the famously melancholy songs of the court minstrel Feste which tend to philosophical ruminations about the wind and the rain.

Speaking of which, “the rain that raineth every day,” the spiegeltent triumphantly shrugged off opening night’s downpours (it’s gale-proof). It was the characters inside who caroused up a storm.

The stage is dominated at one end by a silvered smudgy almost-mirror almost-window that neither reflects nor reveals, but captures shadows. Characters look towards it and, tellingly, fail to see or recognize themselves. Or they appear and disappear above it, in hiding or surveillance mode. All part of a story that starts with a tragic shipwreck, theatrically set forth in Goldberg’s inventive stagecraft.

Dean Stockdale and Troy O’Donnell as Feste and Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Eric Kozakiewicz

Feste the musical Fool played with mischievous amusement by Dean Stockdale (they/them) is there from the start. They’re a wayward spear-carrier (so to speak) with a mandolin instead of a spear, who shows up everywhere. You know from their repertoire of wry glances and knowing grins that they’re street experts in human folly, and the assumptions we feed ourselves.

Viola, the inadvertent instigator — a wide-eyed explorer in Christina Nguyen’s performance — washes up on shore bereft at the loss in the storm of her twin bro (Yassine El Fassi El Fihri). Amusingly, the actors look nothing alike. In Viola’s decision to put grief on hold and don boy clothes to get a job at the court of Duke Orsino (Scott Shpeley), nothing will ever be the same in Illyria.

Cesario, Viola’s new self-creation, gets sent by the persistent Orsino to woo the implacably resistant Lady Olivia on his behalf. Viola falls in love with the Duke; Olivia falls for Viola in disguise as Cesario….

It is a measure of the decisively comic tilt of this Twelfth Night that Olivia, supposedly mired in grief, seems pretty well primed for romance from the start, and ready to party in Kris Unruh’s funny drama queen performance. No mourning black for her. The platform heels and feather-trimmed hot pink party dress are a tip-off that Olivia doesn’t exactly have to be pried from melancholy. She’s fun, but I wonder if this choice doesn’t detract a bit from the disconcerting sense of self-discovery and transformation that’s in Twelfth Night.

Orsino gets a genuinely original comic performance, impeccably timed, from Scott Shpeley. His fierce unsmiling focus, occasionally paused by distracting glimmers of thought about the attractions of his young page, is a portrait of obsession that gradually gets frayed around the edges. A highlight moment is watching him stride briskly through an aisle, all business, wielding a double bass the way other people carry purses. He’s en route to the stage — and a musical number in which REM gets to share an insight with Shakespeare: “O no I’ve said too much/ I haven’t said enough” seems particularly tuned to a production that emphasizes the perplexing nature of gender, love, delusion and self-knowledge.

Brett Dahl and Nadien Chu in Twelfth Night, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Eric Kozakiewicz

Olivia’s rambunctious household is dominated by the exuberant dissolute Sir Toby Belch, here in a gender switch played as Lady Toby by the entirely riotous Nadien Chu. She arrives in every scene, glass first, clutching booze in a different fanciful vessel. The sight of Chu in a pink helmet attached to two beers will not be soon forgotten. Ditto her trotting gait on high heels which tips her forward (presumably to avoid potential spillage).

Chez Olivia there’s another suitor for the mistress of the house. That would be the lanky dimbulb knight Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Lady Toby’s drinking companion. A beat behind every conversation, he seems, in Brett Dahl’s comical performance, perpetually hung over, possibly stoned, getting increasingly sulky by his lack of success, dimly aware from time to time he’s getting fleeced in his marital venture.

The smartest person in the room is invariably Olivia’s pert maid Maria, as played with delightful crunchy skepticism by Jessy Ardern. It’s Maria who devises “a sport royale” to take down Olivia’s pompous, brisk, self-important martinet of a steward Malvolio, by feeding his secret fantasy that his boss fancies him.

Troy O’Donnell is excellent: Malvolio is ripe for a fall. You want him to receive his comeuppance, but you’re taken aback by the cruelty of his punishment and the cheery non-concern of his tormentors. O’Donnell has played Malvolio at Freewill before, but never I think in quite the startling condition of yellow-stockinged undress that leaves Olivia, along with all of us, aghast. Comedy can be so cruel.

The scene in which Maria’s trick is executed is particularly hilarious since there’s really no way for its perpetrators to hide for purposes of voyeurism. O’Donnell makes a meal of Malvolio’s monologue in which he deduces his way into utter delusion. And Goldberg’s staging makes lively use of the aisles and wooden pillars of the spiegeltent as the trap is sprung.   

The Act I finale of the production has the entire cast dancing solo to the wisdom of Radiohead: “I wish I was special. You’re so fucking special.” But by the end of the production,  there’s been a group pairing off. Twelfth Night productions in modern times have often wondered about a romantic spark between the sea captain Antonio and Sebastian. It says something about the comic drive of this Freewill production that even the goofball Sir Andrew will not be going home alone. Lady Toby and Maria leave together, arms linked, martinis in hand.

As the finale ensemble has it, citing the New Radicals, “you’ve got the music in you. Don’t let go.” This new Twelfth Night is a joyful, all-inclusive way to hang on, be your true self, or find a new one. “Nothing that is so is so,” says Feste at a point of maximum comic chaos. Words to live by in a world weighed down by “it is what it is.”

Read the 12thnight Romeo and Juliet review here.

REVIEW

Freewill Shakespeare Festival

Twelfth Night (running in rep with Romeo and Juliet)

Directed by: Amanda Goldberg

Starring: Jessy Ardern, Christina Nguyen, Brett Dahl, Scott Shpeley, Kris Unruh, Dean Stockdale, Graham Mothersill, Nadien Chu, Troy O’Donnell, Yassine El Fassi El Fihri

Where: Cristal Palace Spiegeltent at Edmonton EXPO Centre, 7515 118 Ave.

Running:  through Sept. 3, Romeo and Juliet on all odd nights and even matinees, Twelfth Night on all even nights and odd matinees. Check out freewillshakespeare.com for a full schedule of extra pre- and post-show events.

Tickets: freewillshakespeare.com