Having written nearly 40 theatrical productions in his career, Shakespeare is widely considered one of the masters of literary antiquity, and his work is still studied today, four centuries after his death. UVic theatre professor Fran Gebhard has been teaching and producing Shakespeare for many years, and Twelfth Night was, in fact, her directorial debut, decades ago. Considering this, I was initially uncertain why the Phoenix Theatre’s production of Twelfth Night struck me as such a muddled, mediocre mess, but it seems that this iteration of Shakespeare’s play just couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be.
The play is supposedly set in 2037 on the west coast of Vancouver Island, after a series of climate-related catastrophes, so the play is carrying a poignant ecological message, as well as being a champion of gender and identity fluidity. However, there is nothing in the finished product that indicates the slightest sense of disaster, survival, poverty, or suffering, and instead mostly comes across as a flippant story about a group of friends who pull a heartless prank on a sympathetic, hapless woman they all dislike.
Additionally, the two lead female twin actors, one who plays a man, and the other who unironically plays a woman playing a man, merely results in two actors who are nearly indistinguishable in appearance, voice, and character, and whose gender-bending antics have little impact on the story other than causing moderate confusion among the characters and the audience alike. Being dressed nearly identically, and almost never appearing simultaneously, most of the time I had no idea that an entirely different person and character was on stage, and my narrative comprehension suffered for it.
While the actors were clearly talented and dedicated, there was an odd lack of consensus about how a Shakespeare production is supposed to be portrayed. Some characters were extremely dramatic, like one may expect of that era of theatre, while others were flippantly casual in a way that reflects modern sensibilities. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since both of these portrayals can work equally well… if executed with consistency.
For example, the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo & Juliet adhered to the antiquated approach, creating a consistent through line, placed in the 1500s, with corresponding set design, costuming, dramatic tension, and acting style, and the result is a conservative but strong interpretation of the classic work. On the contrary, the 1996 Hollywood production of Romeo & Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was fully set in the present day, and while the language remained antiquated, every other aspect of tone, setting, and acting style was consistent with ’90s Los Angeles, and it also worked surprisingly well as a Shakespearean epic.
This iteration of Twelfth Night, however, employed a strange mishmash of styles, and the result was that half the cast played the story as a silly comedy with a casually modern portrayal, while the other half played it as a serious drama straight out of the 16th century. The tonal whiplash is uncomfortable, particularly considering that a couple of the actors waffled back and forth between ridiculous absurdity and genuine trauma.
The set was nothing to write home about, consisting simply of an old mobile home, some fish netting, and the rear section of a flatbed truck, and the lack of variation gave the weird impression that the entire play took place in the front yard of somebody’s trailer park across the course of a summer day. Anticipating the argument that this static design was the result of the small space, it’s not: I’ve seen several plays on both sides of the Phoenix Theatre, and a little ingenuity can transform a cramped stage into a refreshingly versatile setting.
Ultimately, I left Twelfth Night feeling unsatisfied, confused, and conflicted, and unable to shake the urge to search out a more cohesive, consistent, and comprehensive version of what is undoubtedly at its core a solid literary masterpiece.