With its topsy-turvy reality, inside-out characters and convoluted comedy this year’s Shakespeare-under-the-stars mixes La Dolce Vita glamour with laugh-out-loud slapstick. Staggering, swaying, dancing on the furniture and being shushed by the maid for creating a humungous racket somewhere on the far side of midnight, the characters in front of us had not in fact been drinking. Nonetheless, the pair of them were decidedly out-of-their-minds drunk – hilariously so, in fact.
Yet not so entirely far gone that they’d forgotten their lines, nor forsaken their ability to say them beautifully. Aidan Scott, giving naughty schoolboy vibes, had no sooner stumbled into the space than he turned towards what appeared to be a flower pot and kotched (Shakespeare might be rolling in his grave at my word choice, but I’m afraid there’s no more appropriate term for it – this was no dry heave, no polite vomit, this was a full night’s ale spewed into the shrubbery). The other stumbling, staggering late-night reveller, this one played by the magnificent Michael Richard, had more than a hint of scallywag about him, too.
He managed – despite all the imaginary beer and wine and whatever else – to spew mellifluous lines of dialogue, the cleverness of the language barely disguised by the slurring and burping of someone who was, in that moment, “professionally” drunk. The place, if you can believe it, was not in fact outside some tawdry Sea Point bar, but a makeshift rendition of an aristocratic home in a fictional land called Illyria, a romanticised coastal region somewhere on the Adriatic seaboard. In reality, it was a large, unflatteringly-lit, windowless room in the Artscape theatre complex, and also where all the hard work that’s gone into shaping this year’sMaynardville production of Twelfth Nighthad been happening over several weeks of intensive rehearsals.
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We, a small entourage of outsiders, had gathered there to watch actors Scott and Richard perform extracts from the show, precisely one week before it opened on 30 January. None of what was happening looked like “hard work”, of course. As the two consummate performers fell about with mischievous abandon, hamming it up with justifiable intent, it struck me that, if they were in fact working, they were having an absolute blast in the process.
This was the Bard at his most whimsical, bawdy and irreverent, his dialogue full of double entendres and jokes you know are filthy and would probably have seemed even dirtier 400 years ago. Director Steven Stead, who calls the actors he’s working with “a Rolls-Royce cast”, has gone for a seriously unhinged take on the comic dimensions of one of Shakespeare’s funniest plays. Stead says he and his creative team, which includes costume designer Maritha Visagie and set designer Greg King, have opted for an atmosphere of glamour and sexiness, channelling a look that’s inspired by filmmakerFederico Felliniand especially his 1960s favourite,La Dolce Vita.
They’ve created dashing costumes and a slick set that cleverly works for a variety of interior and exterior scenes. And while Stead has, where appropriate, steered the actors towards full-tilt slapstick, he’s also given incredible consideration to the deeper, more shadowy aspects of the play. It is, of course, a play of tremendous emotional dexterity.
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