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Saw "Twelfth Night" at the Belasco Theater tonight with Melanie Hanlon and our friend Lisa whose idea it was to see the show, and wow what an amazing production. I was in "Twelfth Night" in college playing Duke Orsino and I thought I'd remember it, but none of it was familiar. (Give me a break, I'm three times older now.) Some of the lines I've heard before but that's because they're quoted often, I didn't remember a thing of the show itself. One thing I know though is, I was horribly inept when I was in the show. I didn't know a thing about the language and a large part of my dialog I memorized by rote and simply recited. It's embarrassing when I think about it now, how little understanding I had of acting at the time. Of course I was in school to learn about acting, and I think I've come a long way, but I'd hate to see today the performance I gave then.
This is such an amazing production. It's a great example of how much a director can bring. There isn't much - if anything - in the way of stage direction in Shakespeare, so the director needs to fill in a lot of the blanks to bring the shows to life. Tim Carroll is the director and he creates a near perfect show here. His inventiveness and the way his ideas always serve the situations and the scenes is astonishing. He never goes against what's written, but finds clever ways to emphasize the text brilliantly, either through comic timing and line emphasis, or by introducing inspired logical and creative wordless action to bring comic moments to life. I'm in awe of the accomplishment of this show.
One challenge with Shakespeare is to make the language communicate to a modern audience unfamiliar with the syntax, and this show succeeds fantastically. Afterwards our friend Lisa said she thinks comedies communicate best of Shakespeare's work and I agree with that. If you can get the comedy right, the audience will follow the gist of the scene even if they don't get every nuance of the language.
This production is SO good, one of the best - and possibly the best - Shakespeare productions I've ever seen, though I admit I don't see a lot of them. It was an absolutely joyous production, and makes me want to see "Richard III" which is in rotation at the Belasco with "Twelfth Night." What a memorable night of theater.
