| . | 06/29/2009
Twelfth Night
By: Victor Gluck
Anne Hathaway as Viola/Cesario and Audra McDonald as Olivia
(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
Film star Anne Hathaway, Academy Award nominated for Rachel Gets Married, has caused a great deal of buzz in her Shakespeare in the Park debut in Twelfth Night. However, it is the production around her that is the real news. Director Daniel Sullivan has surrounded her with a cast of dramatic and musical stage stars including Raśl Esparza, Jay O. Sanders, Julie White, David Pittu, Audra McDonald, and Michael Cumpsty and whipped them into such a delightful soufflé that this oft-seen comedy seems fresh and light. With so many stars of the musical theater, it should come as no surprise that they are incorporated into play’s famed songs which make this into a semi-musical.
None of these theater people are particularly known for their work in Shakespeare, but the results are a true ensemble. Sullivan, most identified with piloting new plays to Pulitzer Prizes, has come up with so many perfect comic touches that the production is a pure delight. John Lee Beatty’s all-green setting with its manicured lawn including two hillocks and rising to a knoll dotted with trees could be used for most of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. The early nineteenth century costumes by Jane Greenwood set the play in the era of Jane Austen’s comedies of manners.
Twelfth Night follows the adventures of Viola (Hathaway) who is shipwrecked in the country of Illyria and mourns the death of her twin brother Sebastian (Stark Sands), supposedly lost in the storm. She decides to don male attire, takes the name of Cesario, and is hired by Duke Orsino (Esparza) to court his lady love, the melancholy Countess Olivia (McDonald), mourning for the deaths of both her father and brother a year ago. However, Olivia is immediately attracted to Cesario and begins wooing him, while Orsino wonders at his own strange attraction to the youth. Unbeknownst to them, Sebastian has washed ashore and is walking around Illyria being taken for Cesario. All is resolved for the best in the final reconciliation scene in which Cesario/Viola and Sebastian are brought face to face before the astonished court.
A slapstick comedy subplot concerns Olivia’s drunken uncle Sir Toby Belch (Sanders), his paramour Maria, Olivia’s gentlewoman (White), and Feste, a clown in the service of Olivia (Pittu). First they entangle Olivia’s suitor Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a bumbling and dim-witted rustic, to more and more ridiculous acts of derring-do and then they work their revenge on Olivia’s disapproving and puritanical steward Malvolio who also has designs on winning her (Cumpsty). All of their plots are exposed by the final curtain but comic characters Aguecheek and Malvolio sustain the brunt of it their perfidy.
Almost as soon as Hathaway appears on stage as Viola she must don male attire. She makes a gracefully boyish soldier as the young Cesario. Although she has a charming stage presence, her lack of theater experience in this company is very telling and while the others are playing their characters to the hilt, she seems quite pale by comparison. She improves somewhat in the second half when she lets herself go once the plot is all wound up, particularly in the comic fencing match between her and Sir Andrew. More stage time should help deepen her performance which now only skims the surface of this complex character that must flirt with both men and women and pretend to be macho in the dueling scene. The resemble between Hathaway and Stark Sands as her twin brother is visually remarkable.
While Audra McDonald is best-known for her Tony Award winning and nominated musical performances in such works as Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, Marie Christine, and 110 in the Shade, this is not her New York debut in Shakespeare. She stole every scene in which she appeared as Lady Percy, wife to Hotspur, in the 2003 Lincoln Center Theater production of Henry IV. It is no secret what McDonald can do with language. As Countess Olivia, she runs the gamut from melancholia and depression to passionate abandon. Watching as she changes from scene to scene is a lesson in acting and her comic timing achieves every possible laugh from her role.
Up till now Raśl Esparza has impressed in contemporary plays by Pinter and Mamet and in concept musicals from Sondheim and Larsen. Although he has not been seen in Shakespeare in NY, his Duke Orsino is to the manner born. He brings an ironic edge to his role which implies he knows that his unrequited love for Olivia is laughable. Jay O. Sanders gives a big performance as the drunken reveler Sir Toby Belch but never forgets to be faithful to Shakespeare’s lines.
Michael Cumpsty’s fall from the high-minded puritan to the ridiculous lover to the abused butt of a joke that almost goes too far is both touching and comic, with Cumpsty making good use of first a frozen frown and then incessant smiles before his descent into near madness. Julie White, the 2007 Tony Award winner for Best Actress, isn’t given enough to do as Olivia’s gentlewoman but she puts her acerbic attitude to good use in her few scenes.
The real surprises of the evening are David Pittu and Hamish Linklater. As the clown Feste who delivers some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful song lyrics here sung to witty original music by symphonic folk-rock band Hem, as well as trading pointed barbs with all of the other characters, Pittu is a comic revelation. Here he makes the utmost of a role that often goes unnoticed among the antics of the other over-the-top characters.
Son of Kristin Linklater, co-founder of the Berkshires, Massachusetts’ Shakespeare and Company troupe, Hamish Linklater turns the awkward and inept Sir Andrew into a comic tour de force. From physical comedy like sliding down the grassy knoll and dancing a highland jig to taking every verbal joke literally, his Sir Andrew is an endearing nebbish who strives for things always out of his mental reach.
Nominally Anne Hathaway’s evening, this Twelfth Night is really that of director Daniel Sullivan who without pushing the slapstick too far has achieved a graceful, charming evening of comedy, love and music with a play that has often been beset by directorial gimmicks. With a wonderful production team and a first-rate cast working at the top of their game, this is an enchanted evening for Shakespeare in the Park which has so often in the past used little but star power to bring in the crowds.
Twelfth Night (through July 12)
The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, Manhattan
For ticket information, visit http://www.publictheater.org
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