“Twelfth Night” opens at The Schoolhouse Theater

By David Begelman

Theater Critic

Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” like “Merchant of Venice” is one of those festive comedies with a dark underbelly. The two plays push the limits of comedy by addressing concerns that have a deeper social impact on audiences.

They also share other characteristics, like women in male roles and overkill when it comes to villains getting their just desserts. In “The Merchant of Venice,” Shylock’s wealth is confiscated, and he’s forced to convert to Christianity. In “Twelfth Night,” for being uptight and puritanical, Malvolio is not only humiliated to the max, he’s consigned to a dark room for a spell. It’s the treatment usually reserved for the mentally ill in the seventeenth century.

“Twelfth Night,” like “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” celebrates another Shakespearean spin on love. The scene is set in Ilyria, a mythical kingdom under the sway of two households, those of Orsino and Olivia. The former, a reflective and love-smitten Duke, opens the comedy with the line, “If music be the food of love, play on.” He’s stuck on Olivia, and in the manner of royal prerogative, arranges for someone else to do his pleading for him.

This turns out to be the heroine of the comedy, Viola. She, like Prospero and Miranda in “The Tempest,” has survived a shipwreck. Her entrée into Orsino’s court is by dint of disguising herself as a man, and endearing herself to the Duke who recruits her to do his wooing.

Viola finds herself in the impossible situation of loving Orsino, who thinks she’s a man, as does Olivia, who promptly falls in love with her. At the end of the play, the truth is revealed, and love finds a way of righting itself. Viola and Orsino are happily matched, while Olivia makes do with Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian. He’s also survived the shipwreck, and turns up in the nick of time to become a reasonable facsimile of his sister in order to enrapture Olivia.

Since Elizabethan stage performers were all men, the actor who debuted in the role of Viola in 1602 was a man in a female role masquerading as a man. Sex-role confusions are a familiar Shakespearean conceit, employed in plays like “As You Like It” that are not dark comedies.

The performance of “Twelfth Night” at The Schoolhouse Theater borders on a ham-fisted approach to the comedy. Gone is any semblance of an ethereal atmosphere of Illyria, in favor of a more direct and less nuanced treatment by director Penny Cherns. There is altogether too much shouting (a by now familiar pattern in underscoring emotional emphasis in American, in contrast to British, Shakespearean productions).

Actors doubled in the roles of Curio/Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Ash Law Edwards), Valentine/Sebastian/Fabian (Jack Berenholtz), Captain/Feste/Officer (Jason Hart), Sir Toby Belch/Priest (Simon MacLean) and Malvolio/Antonio (Neal Mayer). The effect was for performers to exaggerate the qualities of their roles, in order to distinguish them for the audience. But the result in some cases approximated caricature, rather than nuanced interpretation.

“Twelfth Night” runs through June 10 at The Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls, NY. Performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday are 8 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m. Tickets are $33 on Thursday and Friday and $35 on Saturday and Sunday, and may be purchased by calling the box office at 914-277-8477 or contacting www.schoolhousetheater.org.