Shakespeare is alive and well in Stratford
Twelfth Night creates the reality and the imagination of a world turned upside down
“Oh, what a night!” If director Martha Henry’s revelatory new look at Twelfth Night is anything to go by, the glory days of Stratford are back, That my friends means Shakespeare is alive and well and living in the Festival Theatre.
Henry, who starred as Viola in a landmark vision of the play at Stratford in 1966, has searched deep within the text to produce what must be counted a definitive staging of the play opening this year’s festival season on a high note indeed.
Unlike many of her confreres at Stratford, Henry has avoided forcing anachronistic thought on Shakespeare’s play, choosing instead to make brave, sometimes unusual decisions about theme and character that gives the drama richer and darker discord and the comedy a sparkling effervescence.
Henry tugs from the play’s theme of loss and disillusionment a sense of cruelty and madness. Never making fun of the comic characters, she allows their humour to resonate through a bitter strain of desperation.
Similarly, with the characters who love in Shakespeare’s world of befuddled disorder, she offers a tender sense of the sometimes mystic nature of passion.
In this she is abetted by designer John Pennoyer’s evocative landscape. Running the gamut of mourning black to the flouncy froufrous of a ruched wedding dress, Pennoyer creates both the reality and the imagination of a world turned upside down.
Against two mythical chrome trees that blossom with gold flowers and green stalks in the final act, Pennoyer’s Stratford landscape is a simple, yet beguiling one that proves less is often more.
None of this would matter without a strong cast to follow Henry’s simple, yet stylish direction.
As the mischievous, sometimes cruel tricksters, the beautiful Countess Olivia has taken into seclusion with her after the death of her brother, Henry has a strong band of players. They mine every comic line, play the visual humour and bob up and down with the vigour of burlesque. And still, their ragtag humour always manages to suggest a sadness beyond such comic overtones.
Geraint Wyn Davies is a corpulent, red-faced Sir Toby Belch, Lucy Peacock a naughty Maria, red petticoats flapping beneath black weeds of mourning. Tom Rooney is a gangly Sir Andrew Aguecheek, all insolent rage and silly superiority and Gordon S. Miller a wily and cunning Fabian.
Together they give this Twelfth Night its speed and pace, as well as a sense of vaudeville energy.
Michael Blake is a handsome Sebastian, Shannon Taylor a sweet, yet sometimes astringent Olivia, and each deserves the rainbow of happiness waiting at the play’s tidy ending.
Happily, Rod Beattie shucks off his frequently comic persona to invest a deeper, darker vision of Malvolio, the dark puritan spectre, managing to make the infamous cross-gartered scene both funny and sad.
In Sarah Afful, this Twelfth Night has a wonderful Viola. Afful speaks the poetry of Shakespeare’s verse in a way that is modern and clean, yet always blessed with the lyric caress of the text. She is undoubtedly a star in the making. The best for last. Brent Carver is as close to a Canadian theatre star as this country has. Here, as the jester Feste he moves with the quicksilver fancy of a ballet dancer, sings with the sweet-throated warmth of a genuine balladeer and owns this production because he embodies the sometimes solemn, sometimes tender nature of this touching comedy.
Henry’s Twelfth Night is one for the history books.
“Oh what a night, indeed.”
Gary Smith has written about theatre and dance for The Hamilton Spectator for more than 35 years.