On the first day of APs, my true love gave to me…nothing. But however despairing that day was, it was most certainly brightened up a bit by a small group of people wearing garish yellow stockings.
Shakespeariment recently put on a performance of Twelfth Night, one of the Bard’s better known comedies. It’s a tale of cross-dressing and the popular movie She’s The Man was based off of it; if you’ve seen that movie, you pretty much know the plot already.
[But just as a refresher: identical twins. The female twin (Viola) cross-dresses and falls in love with the Duke (Orsino), who is in love with Lady Olivia who falls in love with the cross-dressed Viola who went to Olivia to profess Orsino’s love. Then there’s a subplot involving drunken idiots and revenge with yellow stockings. The path of true love has many obstacles, and Shakespeare takes great delight in screwing over the audience.]
East’s Shakespeariment crew did the Bard justice with their zany interpretation of an already befuddling tale. The main love ‘quadrangle’ was played by Emily Krieger as the crossdressing twin Viola, Evan Sparks as the dashing Duke Orsino, Spencer Sonnefeld as the mostly confused “crossdress-ee” twin Sebastian, and Aliza Schneider as the lovely Lady Olivia. There was angsty coffee drinking, sac-swigging, butter-eating, and copious amounts of cross-gartered yellow stocking on the legs of Ms. Lorna Krabill, who played the ever put-upon servant Malvolio. We love to hate Malvolio, and his unfortunate story (made 1000 times more dramatic by Lorna) left the audience laughing the entire night. (But don’t worry, true love prevailed in the end. Although maybe not for Malvolio.)
Other notable performances included Tatianna Boyle as the scheming servant Maria, Nicolas Leberer with an amazing Shakeperiment debut as the hard-drinking Sir Toby Belch, Nathan Ostrowski as the designated comic relief character Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Teagan Faran as the the wonderfully musical, deceptively clever “fool” Feste.
Shakespeariment did not disappoint with this year’s performance of Twelfth Night. The cast and crew did a terrific job, and we applaud their hard work in putting on a fantastic production. Look forward to next year’s Shakespeariment play, which will (probably) include even more crossdressing and sac drinking!
