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A CurtainUp Review
Twelfth Night (or What You Will) & What You Will (or Twelfth Night)
First and foremost, Eric Tucker deserves credit for daring to mount his inventive Twelfth Nights, just two seasons after the much lauded Broadway production with Mark Rylance as Olivia. Tucker doesn't outdo what the Brits but he does achieve something quite remarkable with this new adaptation now at the Dorothy Strelsin Theater. He uses Shakespeare's titular peculiarity, a palpable stage reality in two parts, forcing you to remember that the comedy possesses twin title besides the corporeal twins (Viola and Sebastian). These Twelfth Nights are smartly designed so that each production—features the same cast. And each stands solidly alone. I dropped into Twelfth Night (or What You Will) first, and found it to be a zesty treatment of the comic masterpiece. Scholars have dubbed this the Bard's "Farewell to Romantic Comedy." Little wonder that Tucker stages it as a gutsy romantic romp that ends happily ever after. The production goes big on the idea that lovers, however confused they all might be at the start of their romances, do end up ultimately falling in love with their soul mate. The gender-bending of roles gets a whiff too blurry at times so that sorting out the zany characters as they travel through Illyria can be challenging. That said, the play sustains the romantic spirit at its core. Turcker impressively double tasks as performer as well as a member of the five-member ensemble The blocking is kept ultra-simple and the set on the no-frills scrappier side. Valerie T. Bart's costumes are casual modern. Eeven though confusions will spring up and true love takes time (and a few happy accidents) to ripen, Jack will ultimately find Jill, and vice versa. A very different tack is taken in What You Will which is by far the wilder, and more powerful piece. It focuses on the festive underlining in the text and manifests it to the nth degree. The total effect is intoxicating, and the madness of love is worn on every lover's sleeve, collar, and lipstick-stained cheek. Here the ensemble is dressed in sparkling white. It's as if plucked right off a country club porch to sip their postprandial cocktails at leisure. Love and passion are clearly in the air. The wild and wooly atmosphere is heightened by having his characters indulge in eating soft-serve ice cream, with the hapless Andrew Aguecheek (played superbly by Tucker) ending up with an inverted ice cream cone on his head. In short, this is pure Mardi gras, complete with snappy choreography and jazzy songs. And it all works like a charm. Rather than go on at length about this and that innovation in these twin Twelfth Nights, I can only urge you go see this joint venture for yourself. The two pieces serve as theatrical surrogates to each other, and terrifically illuminate the difficulties, madness, and glory of love. This Twelfth Night, done twice differently, won't make you forget the 2013 Broadway iteration of the same play. But if the Brits production brought the Elizabethan world alive in the here and now, Tucker's manages to infuse Bedlam's version with a real American flavor . What's more, he cements his reputation here for being a director who can take a classic, prune away its prissiness, and make it speak with a New York accent.
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