Review: The scene: a talent-laden stage
By Alex Wen
Oct. 29, 2003 9:00 p.m.
Somewhere in the middle of Theatre 40’s spirited
performance of “Twelfth Night,” the servant Fabian
(Rachael Lyerla) steps up to the audience, cheekily pulls down her
character’s elasticized beard, and declares, “If this
were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable
fiction.”
Director Steven William, abetted by a more-than-able cast,
seizes upon this line, one suspects, and turns his rendition of the
play into a festival of metadramatic madness. The program notes
offer a clue, “The Scene: A stage in a theatre,” to
suggest what’s truly at play here.
Theatre 40’s “Twelfth Night” isn’t,
however, a one-trick, one-note rendering. The ensemble of six
actors turns in a layered performance. Working with manic costume
changes and foreign accents and character types to help delineate
their multiple personalities, the actors inhabit their roles with
gusto.
Michael Bonnabel’s Malvolio is particularly memorable.
Played hilariously like a French bohemian Bill Murray on drugs, his
Malvolio is a study in comic timing, effectively reduced to a
curiously piteous figure by the play’s end.
One of the production’s undoubted highlights is the
luminous Yael Berkovich. Berkovich, who evidently trained at the
Globe Theatre in London, has that rare ability to captivate the
audience with what seems the slightest of efforts. As Feste, the
melancholic clown, Berkovich proves to be a superlative minstrel
singer, and Williams unabashedly makes full use of her musical
talents. Berkovich also doubles as the production’s live
sound effects person, performing to the side of the stage in full
view of the audience in a clever coup de theatre.
Clashing head-on with the much-lauded Shakespeare’s Globe
performance of the same play, Theatre 40’s “Twelfth
Night” runs the unfortunate risk of being steamrolled by an
internationally acclaimed juggernaut. This smaller undertaking,
however, is not without its own ambitions.
With its Brechtian set changes, bold strokes, lightning pace
(the show clocks in at two hours flat, compared to the
Globe’s three), zany characterization and overall theatrical
zest, Theatre 40’s “Twelfth Night” might just be
different enough to recommend itself as a viable and vital
interpretation.
It’s a production that is not by any stretch perfect, but
the overall performance has a way of making one forget that.
-Alex Wen
