Berkeley's 'Twelfth' Betters the Bard
San Jose Mercury News
Even a bumbling director can't mess up "Twelfth Night" (too badly, anyhow);
but, by like token, it takes a very special one to improve upon the script,
which is matchless.
Richard E.T. White is also matchless, in my book, and his production of
"Twelfth Night" for Berkeley Shakespeare Festival's post-season offering is very
beautiful, wise and loving. Unlikely as it may seem, he improves upon the
script.
White, who was resident director at the festival and at Berkeley Repertory
Theater until 1987 when he moved to Chicago, has an inventive mind, a
restless sensibility and a way with actors. Here he makes lovely use of an
all-but-flawless cast.
He also has a designer of singular skill, the gifted Ariel. (Parkinson is her
official surname, but she never uses it.) They have set "Twelfth Night" in
Cajun Louisiana around 1830, a country of cypress trees, Spanish moss,
fireflies, swampy sensuousness and magic. The Cajun music (by Steve Adams)
is sweet-and-sour, spicy, with an undercurrent of sadness even in its merriest
moments.
It's a place where Maria, the maid, is a fortune teller who reads Tarot cards;
Antonio, the sea captain, a buccaneer. Feste, the jester, in a brilliant
performance by the protean John Bellucci, has become an itinerant
backwoods balladeer, brown and barefoot, with hair in long braids, shell
jewelry and a musky, seductive voice.
The sliding screens Ariel has designed look like the leaded- glass windows of
some fantasy church, celebrating Nature in images of globes and petals
instead of God in saints chastely posed.
Under Kurt Landisman's luscious jewel lighting, the screens glow green and
violet for some scenes, glimmer like moonstones and tourmalines in others.
"The tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind's a very opal,"
it is said of the lovesick Duke Orsino, and he has only to look at the walls of
his study for iridescent confirmation.
Near perfection
It may be a syntactic felony to call "Twelfth Night" "the most perfect of the
comedies," but in truth it is not perfect. That is what makes it so golden, so
breathtaking and so painfully sweet.
The play is rooted in sorrow: Viola believes her twin brother drowned in a
shipwreck, and Olivia also mourns for a dead brother. At every juncture, after
Shakespeare has led us into the more joyous realm of romance or up the
primrose path of silliness, he returns us to this fundamental sobriety. "Twelfth
Night" is a play about life continuing, and flourishing, on the ashes of grief,
attending to the reverberations of memory.
Perhaps the most striking indicator is Malvolio, Olivia's prissy and puritanical
steward, who allows himself to be seduced by a love letter (planted by
mischief-makers) into thinking Olivia loves him. Even after many a fine
production of "Twelfth Night," I had never been able to accept the brutal
consequences of his folly -- he is assumed to be mad and thrown into a dark
cellar -- until I saw this interpretation. Julian Lopez-Morillas is delicately
arrogant, pitiably credulous. His tormentors realize early enough they've gone
too far, so we can still like them and find their antics amusing.
The cast is so good that I want to name every one: the exquisite Nike Doukas
for her aristocratic, very human Olivia; Lura Dolas, for her earthy yet
compassionate Maria; Robin Goodrin Nordli as the androgynous Cesario (Viola
in disguise). Viola/Cesario is a tough trick to bring off: to be both sexes and
never lose sight of either. Nordli manages it credibly.
Douglas Sills is at first a shade too histrionic as Orsino, but he calms into
regality. Ollie Nash, the magnificent Falstaff of the festival's "Merry Wives of
Windsor," is just as vainglorious and gaudy as Sir Toby Belch. (However, Peter
A. Jacobs rises too seldom to meet him as the foppish Sir Andrew
Aguecheek.) Making Fabian the cook, as Duane Boutte plays him in toque and
apron, is an inspired idea and clears the underbrush of superfluous servants.
Strong supporting roles
In the smaller roles, Samuel Gregory has fun with the one- armed constable,
Bob Devin Jones is stalwart as Antonio, David Kirkwood mild and benevolent
(and funny!) as the priest, Jordan Lee Williams upstanding as Sebastian (Viola's
brother). But a special nod goes to D. Lance Marsh, who makes each of six or
so silent servants, assistant constables, etc., different and delightful. He does
as much with a pair of popping eyes and a cringing stance as if he had pages of
script to back him up.
The rest of the production is as pretty as it can be. I especially liked Sir
Andrew, in a blond pageboy wig and short trousers straight from the pages of
"Alice in Wonderland."
After the Berkeley run, the production travels to schools and colleges
throughout the state, including St. Mary's College, Moraga, on Oct. 30.
-Judith Green, San Jose Mercury News
September 26, 1990
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