TWELFTH NIGHT, EH?
Shakespeare gets a Canadian twist
It was the hockey sticks that caught my eye and piqued my interest.
Benjamin Blyth, the artistic director of Malachite Theatre, sent me a news release for his upcoming production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night including some photos from the Edmonton run of the play.
As I was scrolling through, I stopped short.
Two actors were sparring with hockey sticks and I immediately wondered what Macbeth might have thought had he seen the photo.
“Is this a hockey stick which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.”
I called Blyth and he informed me he has set his Twelfth Night in contemporary Alberta right after Christmas.
“We’ve been going through a really harsh winter here in Alberta and the melancholy of the play matches what we’re experiencing. It works wonderfully together,” says Blyth.
In this Malachite production, Viola (Merran Carr-Wiggin) was shipwrecked somewhere off British Columbia and she believes her twin brother Sebastian (Andrew Cormier) has been drowned, so she makes her way to Alberta disguised as a boy.
She manages to get a position in the court of the lovesick Duke, Orsino (Byron Martin).
Meanwhile, in the court of Countess Olivia (Danielle LaRose), who is the object of Orsino’s obsession, Christmas is over but no one is going home. The relatives are hanging around and the liquor cabinet is fast depleting, but Olivia’s cousin Sir Toby Belch (William Mitchell) is determined to make the parting days of January a party to remember.
In Edmonton, this version of Twelfth Night was staged in Holy Trinity Anglican Church. In Calgary, the raucous comedy will be staged in St. Stephen’s Anglican Church (1121 14th Ave. S.W.) from Friday to Sunday.
“These churches are the ideal settings for our productions,” says Blyth explaining “they lend an atmosphere of mystery and magic that is always present in Shakespeare’s plays.
“There’s so much more you can do when you’re not in a traditional black box theatre. With a church, the audience is in an immersive space very much like Elizabethan audiences would have been in 1720.”
Blyth says he sourced 50 artificial Christmas trees to allow him to turn the church into an indoor/ outdoor setting.
“All the trees will give it the feel of the outdoors, but we also have lamps, a fireplace and armchairs for the indoor settings.”
Because this was a joint Calgary/Edmonton production, the cast members are from both cities. Filling out the roles are Evan Hall, Monica Maddaford, Perry Gratton, Samantha Jeffery, Brann Munro, Colin Matty and Phillip Hackborn.
Tickets for Twelfth Night are $25 and are available, cash only, at the door before each performance or online at Eventbrite.ca