‘12th Night’ a true delight as a musical
Thunder rumbles. Lightning flashes. A rope slithers on, cordoning the ensemble in the shape of a ship’s hull as a sail rises behind them. Wind squalls. Other actors become waves and seaweed. Two bodies, both all in white, float above the others. They’re reaching fruitlessly for each other’s hands.
Wordlessly and gorgeously, San Francisco Playhouse’s “Twelfth Night” communicates the backstory of twins Viola (Sophia Introna) and Sebastian (Bear Manescalchi), who are separated by a shipwreck. Then Shaina Taub’s music kicks in, a joyful, jazzy expansion of the show’s famous first line: “If music be the food of love, play on.”
This production, which opened Wednesday, Dec. 1, is no ordinary take on William Shakespeare’s romantic comedy of gender swaps, mistaken identities and interlocking love triangles (which grow into quadrilaterals). Conceived by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Taub, it adapts Shakespeare into a musical so persuasively that you might think the two genres had always been intertwined.
Is there really that much difference, after all, between a searching soliloquy and an 11 o’clock number?
San Francisco Playhouse is a midsize company, but it’s still a scrappy one — the kind of place where the founders’ dog roams lobby and house on opening night. With “Twelfth Night,” director Susi Damilano reveals it at its best, showing how much artists can accomplish when they don’t have Broadway budgets, but more than make up for it with ingenuity, craft, perceptiveness and compassion.
The show’s whole setup — castaway Viola disguising herself as Cesario in order to work for Illyria’s Duke Orsino (Sean Fenton) — is dispatched before you know it, within a single, economical number and costume change. Shakespeare newbies are welcome here; the pro Michael Gene Sullivan as Sir Toby Belch can tell a whole story the way he enters falling down a staircase, the way he uses single words as rocket launching pads to whole new shades of meaning.
Damilano has assembled a cast with stellar singing voices, which under the music direction of Dave Dobrusky blend together as if they’d been in a chorus together for years. Especially strong is Sam Paley as Feste, who approaches the ballad “If You Were My Beloved” as if she
could lift the burdens of thwarted lovers Viola and Orsino off their shoulders. Ensemble member Jamie Zee also shines, with a mature, thoughtful alto that could effortlessly sustain the whole show if it needed to. Nicole Helfer’s saucy choreography helps define the play’s universe; in this gyrating, swiveling take on Illyria, is it any wonder the world turns upside down?
And there are still more standouts to highlight, especially among the play’s clowns. Caleb Haven Draper as Sir Andrew Aguecheek prances as if he’s in his own private production of “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” He can make a pout extend from his face to his posture to his aura, as a deflated balloon turned human.
And can someone please write a solo show for Atticus Shaindlin’s Malvolio, pompous servant to the countess Olivia (Loreigna Sinclair)? He doesn’t just move like a choo choo train or smile like a feral cat pre-bite, or maybe as if he’s about to get X-rayed at the dentist. He actually even just stands funny, as might a ballerina posing for cameras only he can see. His frozen gaze, whether he’s fantasizing about others cowering before him or plotting revenge against those who don’t recognize his greatness, contains multitudes.
Yet there’s something serious at work amid all this glorious tomfoolery. As the whole twin thing gets sorted out and Viola reveals who she really is, Damilano’s production makes clear that even when you disguise yourself and fool everyone, something about your wondrously individual soul can’t help but shine through. Even if you’re attracted to someone under false pretenses, there’s something beautiful about the act of attraction itself. No front we put up or trousers we don can dampen the human urge to love and be loved.