| Falling under the spell of Shakespeare's romantic comedies means setting your incredulity aside. Most of us, after all, don't make the mistake of confusing a grown woman with her twin brother. Most of us don't fall in love with people we barely know. Most of us don't get shipwrecked on remote seacoasts, and most of us don't pick ourselves up after those shipwrecks and disguise ourselves as the opposite sex. It's the good fortune of the Orlando Shakespeare Festival's Twelfth Night that its audiences will have no trouble believing someone could mistake a Viola for her twin brother, Sebastian, or that, after their shipwreck, the two could wind up in identical attire. Director Robert Hall's production, which opened Thursday night at Lake Eola Park, is full of the antic qualities and the comic characterizations that make you inclined - no, delighted - to believe anything Will Shakespeare desires. And if the festival's audiences don't always catch the deeper meanings of Twelfth Night, they will be regaled enough by the shenanigans of these wondrously confused characters not to care a bit. Twelfth Night, the last of Shakespeare's romantic comedies, is the story of a kingdom named Illyria in which everything has gone absurdly awry. Almost everyone noble has fallen in love with someone inappropriate, and nearly all of the underlings have forgotten their place. If Feste, the clown, seems the wisest person in Illyria, it's partly because he doesn't have a lot of competition. The director has called Illyria a magical kingdom, and his production tries to build on that quality. Festive banners in deep red and blue velvets hang from the dark wood of the multi-leveled set. Six musicians serenade the Illyrian court with such period instruments as recorder, crumhorn and lute. Hall has built on the joviality of his Shakespeare Festival cast: Almost all of his principals find in their characters as much merriment as anyone might wish. | Some of them do more than that. Jane McPherson, as the adventurous maiden Viola, is a bright and lively heroine with a wonderfully expressive face; Ben Gunter brings a puckish charm to the witty Feste as well as a tuneful voice. Joseph Culliton, who plays the title role in the festival's Macbeth, is suitably grave and foolish as the self-important steward Malvolio (think L.A. Law's Douglas Brackman, crossed with Snagglepuss), and Paul M. Wegman, in a lank yellow wig, is hilariously chipper as the fatuous Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Others deserve mention as well: Eric Hoffmann's rascally Sir Toby Belch; Sybil Lines' mischievous serving maid Maria; Jeff Strohaver's melancholy Duke Orsino; and especially Marion Marsh's countess Olivia, a sap in love if ever one was (and a dead ringer for Alice in Wonderland's Queen of Hearts.) A malfunctioning and persistent fire alarm backstage on opening night threatened to ruin the show's climactic scene. Still, the opening performance was better served by the festival's sound system than Macbeth's was Wednesday night; body microphones didn't crackle too badly Thursday, and almost every word was clear. It's too bad, though, the festival can't be held in a more suitable space than the Eola Park amphitheater, where the sounds of buses and helicopters compete with the performers' voices. Yet nothing could ruin as joyful a production as this one, in which all the characters come blissfully to their senses at the end. Malvolio may seem an extravagant imbecile when he cries, in his own doleful way, ''I thank my stars! I am happy!'' But the Shakespeare Festival's audiences are apt to second his every word. |
