|
Twelfth Night
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Jay Paul Skelton
At City Lit Theater
1020 W. Bryn Mawr
Chicago, IL
Call 773-293-3682, tickets $25
Fridays & Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 3 pm
Running time is 2 hours, 15 minutes with intermission
Through February 24, 2008
Laughs aplenty in Twelfth Night
City Lit Theater’s first Shakespeare production had mixed results. It is difficult to mount a stage worthy production of The Bard’s work with inexperienced non-Equity actors. This production suffered with several players lack of elocution that found some mumbling, some speaking too fast in a run-on words. The sing-song cadences rendered much of the dialogue hard to grasp. Many more laughs were muted by such poor diction. It is amazing why so many actors rush through classic dialogue often failing to enunciate properly.
Yet, there was enough humor, bordering on silliness and farce to make the show worthy. The younger audience members laughed heartily. I got hung-up on the lack of articulation.
Twelfth Night is a joyful comedy featuring a complicated love triangle. Viola (Tiffany Joy Ross), a shipwrecked stranger in Illyria disguised her self as a man and she enters the service of Duke Orsino (Jeremy Cudd). Quickly, she falls in love with the Duke but she can’t reveal her identify just yet. Orsino loves Olivia (Vanessa Greenway), who’ll have nothing to do with him. He sends the disguised Viola to Olivia as his emissary. Olivia promptly falls for the emissary. The fun ensues.
The comic subplot (the finest moments of this production) feature the running battle between Malvolio (Robert McLean in a tour de force comic turn), the chief of staff and the heavy drinking, fun-loving rogue Sir Toby Belch (Fran Nall in a comic force) with his two pals—Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Nick Lake) and Feste (Julian Martinez). These frantic scenes were a joy.
The cast had energy to burn and it became infectious despite the poor articulation from some. This production will make you laugh and Rob Mclean’s Malvolio alone is worth the ticket price.
Somewhat Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: January 14, 2008
Jeff Recommended
|
