Viola has just washed up on the shores of Illyria. Her twin brother Sebastian was lost at sea. In mourning, she disguises herself as Cesario and falls in love with the Duke Orsino while catching the heart of the Countess Olivia — who had promised herself that she would resist love’s temptation until seven years after her own brother’s death.
It’s a tale that limns the whirlwind and confusion of mistaken identities. Twelfth Night is William Shakespeare’s hilariously perplexing story of three romantics navigating the woes of grief, unrequited love and the urges that fall in between.
When you think of Shakespeare, the visions that come to mind are probably nowhere near the euphonious chaos of an early 20th century coastal bohemian circus, or the whimsy and drama of song and dance. But director Diana Donnelly took advantage of the unexpected and constructed the classic play around these elements for this year's Bard on the Beach production of Twelfth Night.
The company’s headlining play this season exceeds anything you could have ever expected from a modern adaptation. The carnival setting opens the stage to bursts of reds, yellows, oranges and blues, the rage of uncontrollable animal print, thoughtfully paced musical numbers and resonance aflame with intricate storytelling and characters like you and me falling in love.
“There's a real element of play to everything which is really exciting,” said UBC BFA alumna Christine Quintana, who plays Madame Mystique and understudies the characters of Maria, Olivia and Malvolia. “This liminal space where love happens — it's a real thrill.”
“People will have this experience firing on all their senses,” said Dawn Petten, also a UBC BFA alumna, who plays Malvolia, the puritan manager to Countess Olivia.
As with most other characters in the play, Petten’s role is a transformative one. In Malvolia’s case, this journey is catalyzed by a trick played on her by the other servants of the household, who convince Malvolia that Olivia is in love with her.
“The trick taps into something for [Malvolia] — it taps into longing and loss and self-expression, where the character is very reserved earlier in the play, very straight,” Petten said. “And then, through this believing that someone loves her, she comes into this embodiment of her own desire.”
In Shakespeare’s original script, Malvolia is a male character, Malvolio. But Donnelly’s production opted for a female character, following suit behind Tamsin Greig’s portrayal of Malvolia in the 2017 production of Twelfth Night by the National Theatre — the first company to bend the gender of the role.
And Malvolia’s part is not the only aspect of Bard on the Beach’s production that challenges the play’s conventional plot. Camille Legg’s Viola meets a resolution that forgoes the character’s traditional happily ever after with a Queer twist to the script.
“Cesario and Viola both are me. For all that I am made of, all I be,” Legg proclaims to Aidan Correia’s Orsino as their character steps into the full realization of their gender identity.
“We're at a moment when we're obviously thinking about Canadian theatre as more than just Shakespeare or English language works,” said Quintana. “We're at a time when we want to think more broadly about whose stories are being told.”
Just as Shakespeare stirred conversation through his art, classical theatre profits from reshaping Shakespeare’s stories while upholding the same core themes of his works that humanize them and make them loveable — even after 400 years.
“I've seen the way that young people move around the gender spectrum,” said Petten. She recalled one the show’s first student matinées when the crowd screamed “with delight and recognition of seeing themselves on stage.”
“My dream is that [the show] is a revelation for [audiences],” said Petten. “That Shakespeare is contemporary and now and of our era and who we are and that it is accessible to all.”
“The Bard stages are starting to look more like Vancouver city streets,” Quintana added. “And it's a really exciting time to be working with the company.”
To preserve theatre that is fundamentally Shakespeare, a performance must fully surrender to the visceral poetics of the language.
“It's so lush,” Petten mused. “I feel like for every feeling you've ever had, you could find a Shakespeare line and a play or a sonnet that would perfectly encapsulate that.”
As Petten explained, embodying Shakespeare is an athletic endeavour — it takes a special kind of delivery to depict the language in a way that invites imagination, interpretation and above all, the thrill of a Shakespearean kind of romance.
“[Falling in love in Shakespeare] feels so in the room with us, we're breathing the same breath as these characters, we’re falling in love and our hearts quicken to experience it, to witness it,” Petten reflected.
“Theatre is a magical thing. And it is especially so in this world of Illyria and Twelfth Night and at Bard.”
You can catch Twelfth Night at Bard on the Beach until September 21.
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