Twelfth Night a beloved play about pursusing your passion
The Shakespeare company is capping off a bloody (good) season with a bit of comic relief. Following up the violent Andronicus and the lesser known The Winter’s Tale ) Twelfth Night is one of the Bard’s most-beloved and oft-performed comedies.
“It’s one of his most perfectly put-together plays. There’s a lot going on but it all makes sense. It’s quite easy for an audience to follow” says Cam Ascroft who plays Malvolio in the production directed by Kate Newby.
The story opens with a shipwreck. The feisty intelligent Viola (Lara Schmitz) survives but believes (mistakenly) that her twin brother Sebastian (Brett Dahl) is dead. Viola disguises herself as a man and enters the service of Duke Orsino (Nathan Schmidt). She falls in love with him but he thinks he’s in love with Olivia (Sarah Wheeldon) who in turn ends up falling for the disguised Viola.
Meanwhile Malvolio Olivia’s pompous servant is tricked into believing Olivia is actually in love with him making him an object of ridicule for Olivia’s other servants and would-be suitors.
Ascroft who first played Malvolio right out of university describes him as the play’s “misunderstood” character. “He could be seen as a stalk villain kind of a prick actually but there’s a lot more depth humanity and deep emotion to Malvolio than one might think” he says.
Ascroft surmises it’s the undercurrent of “darkness” and “sadness” running through Twelfth Night that gives the play its enduring popularity — sadness stemming from the death of Olivia’s brother and father whom she is mourning and the nasty revenge taken on Malvolio and the Duke Orsino’s unrequited love for Olivia.
That said Ascroft says Twelfth Night is “very very funny.” There are a host of comic characters including Olivia’s uncle Sir Toby Belch (Duval Lang); Olivia’s potential suitor Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Devon Dubnyk); and Olivia’s jester Feste (Graham Percy) who in this production plays something of “an omniscient all-knowing observer watching the action onstage and somehow influencing it.”
The Shakespeare Company’s production is set in the Mediterranean among the colours and sounds of the Romani culture. “In the Romani culture passions run high. Emotions tend to be bigger and are expressed at a high level” explains Ascroft adding that the play’s costuming courtesy of Ronda Borneman and Jonathan Lewis’ score portray that atmosphere.
“Jonathan has taken a lot of songs from the show which were Elizabethan tunes and gypsified them” says Ascroft.
As for the costumes expect loose flowing profiles with “a great deal of jewelry bangles baubles and dangly things.”
Consistent with most contemporary productions of the Bard’s works there have been some edits to bring it down to about two-hours. The company has also chosen to stage this play in the round. “There’s something cool about being able to connect with individual audience members in the entire space” says Ascroft.
One of the overarching themes in Twelfth Night is “following your passion” says Ascroft. “It’s about the pursuit of whatever gives your life meaning and fighting to your utmost to get whatever that is” he adds. In this play that could be Viola’s passion for Duke Orsino Malvolio’s thirst for power or Sir Toby’s passion “for living life with no responsibility and for over-indulgence.”
“Sometimes we want the wrong things but we want them nonetheless.”
