Bawdy, outrageous, laugh-out-loud fun—they’re not words usually associated with Shakespearean classics, which unfortunately have a reputation for staid drama and linguistic gymnastics that feel too cerebral for a summer night. But not the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival’s current production of Twelfth Night—it’s a silly farce of mistaken identity with sparkling wit, visionary direction, and captivating actors who so entertainingly bring the Bard’s words to life that you’ll have zero trouble following, and laughing, along.
LTSF’s new Producing Artistic Director Sara Bruner kicks off her first full season with the organization as this show’s director, and she’s a triumph. From the play’s first moments, you can tell this isn’t stereotypical Shakespeare. There are no Elizabethan costumes—no sentries in pantaloons, no powdered wigs. This production is bursting with color, light and sound. A jester in clownish attire stands atop waves that appear carved into the stage, looking ahead at the foolishness to come.
Then, a windswept maiden, washed ashore after a shipwreck, appears to our right, atop a Tahoe boulder. Bruner takes advantage of the Sand Harbor amphitheater’s dimensions, introducing our main character, Viola (played by Grayson Heyl), so that she hails, both literally and figuratively, from an unexpected place. Viola has landed on the island of Illyria, stepping onto its shores in the middle of the audience. She meanders her way through the crowd, encountering a sea captain (M.A. Taylor) and explaining that she has lost her twin brother and is utterly alone. The captain advises her that for her safety, as a woman alone on a strange island, she should disguise herself as a man to make her way in this new world.
Viola takes his advice. Dressed in a pencil-thin mustache and white suit with powder-blue trim reminiscent of an early 1900s bathing costume, Viola pretends she is a man named Cesario and becomes a page and confidant to Duke Orsino (Jeremy Gallardo). Orsino shares with Cesario that he is desperately in love with Countess Olivia (Angela Utrera), but he faces a dilemma: Olivia is mourning her recently deceased brother and has sworn not to marry for seven years until she has finished mourning. Orsino isn’t willing to wait. Could Cesario plead his case to her, on Orsino’s behalf? Viola, meanwhile, is developing a crush on Orsino and can’t act on it. All she can do is earn his admiration by following through on the request…