REVIEW: Twelfth Night @ The Royal Shakespeare Company

Emily Taaffe as Viola in Twelfth Night. Photograph by Keith Pattison

I saw Twelfth Night last at the RSC.  It was the one time since being here that I REALLY missed not having a camera.  If you've never been to the Royal Shakespeare Company Main Stage in Stratford-upon-Avon, it is a grand theater made mostly of industrial brick, which is to say that while it is very sturdy looking, it has spot inside that the theater makes no effort to hide of a very rough nature.  With broken bricks and discoloration, you get the feeling that you are in an old brick warehouse or airplane hangar, when in fact the building is relatively new compared to some of the buildings you'll find everywhere around here.

The seating for Twelfth Night was a thrust stage, wherein the thrust part of the stage was obviously something built for the express purposes of their Shipwreck Series of shows ("The Tempest", "The Comedy of Errors", and "Twelfth Night") with a pool of water making up the downstage right portion of the stage, wood-planked floor reminiscent of the decking to an boat wreckage that is made into a progressive on the stage from completely flat on the downstage end to almost vertical all the way upstage, and scattered pieces of furniture most likely found in an old hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  The costumes of the characters ranging from 1930's New York to 1990's London to the 2012 Hipster with a touch of "Steampunk" in there.

Emily Taaffe, Ankur Bahl, and Jonathan McGuinness. Photograph by Keith Pattison.

In the upstage center of the stage stands a skeletal pillar, that ended up being one of the most versatile pieces of set design I have ever seen... or at least versatile in my most recent memory.  The skeletal nature of the pillar, when a part of a scene that was taking place indoors seemed as if the pillar was merely hollowed out as a significant portrayal of the age of the foyer that the scene was taking place.  When the scene shifted to one that was supposed to be played on the docks, a blinking red light that was situated inside the pillar three-quarters of the way up, made the pillar appear as if it were a part of a crane or buoy that you would find on the shores of just about any fishing village in the world.  In front of this pillar hung a chandelier wrapped in black scrim, so when the scene took place indoors the chandelier simply lit up from inside making the scrim disappear, and when it took place out of doors the chandelier went dark, making it seem as if the chandelier were actually a bag of fish hanging off the crane directly behind it.  The impressive nature of this design, and its versatility, stem from the fact that all of the images created by the design were very specific as to their locale (fishing village docks, ramshackle hotel and old boat wreckage) without changing a thing beyond a few lighting perspectives.  In the picture to the left and below you can see the pillar standing as a part of a lounge seat reminiscent of the old weathered leather couches you'd find in prewar hotels, and the plank flooring as it slopes up toward the ceiling further upstage.

There were many more elements to the setting that created wonderful eye-catching spectacle, such as a working industrial elevator upstage right, and the upstage left exit being a fully-functional turn-of-the-century rotating door set on a raked stage that produced a feeling of the actors either falling off the stage through one side of the rotation and then climbing back out of the door as they reentered.  Nothing about this stage seemed in line with itself, almost as if the hotel itself had crashed upon the rocks of the stage at the RSC and we were witnessing the characters as if they'd all crashed there at one point or another throughout history.

Jonathan Slinger as Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Photograph by Keith Pattison.

The content of the show, besides the setting was not an afterthought by any measure, but it was not something I focused a great deal upon.  As I have seen Twelfth Night done before (The Globe in London, and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater), and read it off the page, I was familiar with the story and only paid attention at the particular talent and portrayal of the characters as it differed from what I'd seen previously.  Jonathan Slinger as Malvolio, pictured left, was a delight to watch and extremely funny in his portrayal, giving his character an almost mealy, and extremely British aristocratic air to his speech and physicality.  With the portrayal ending in a way I'd not seen prior to this, with Malvolio ending up center stage, pathetic and stripped of all but his pants with stirrups attached, malevolently pronouncing, "I will be revenged."  Malvolio becomes the victim of all on stage and all the audience.  It was here I realized the cultural topic of bullying being so clearly brought to the forefront, and I felt almost guilty for having laughed at his obvious preening and prancing across the stage during the entire play prior to that moment.  As a victim of bullying in my younger years, I saw just exactly what I believe the director, the actor, and the playwright intended me to see, that I had not realized prior to seeing this performance.  In fact, I was almost upset that I hadn't seen the obvious thematic element of bullying in the previous productions I had seen.

The visuals of this play were exceptional, the characters and portrayals of each were entertaining, and the show entirely worth seeing.  Well done Royal Shakespeare Company!

If you'd like to see more information about the Royal Shakespeare Company, or would like to read a real review and not one by some random blogger, go to http://www.rsc.org.uk/.  If you'd like to see where I got the pictures, go to http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/twelfth-night/.

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool
And to do that well craves a kind of wit. -- Twelfth Night, Act III, Sc. I
Year One, Day Four -- Words Written: 0