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OSF�s �Twelfth Night� plays for laughs By Bill Varble The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Saturday debuted a stylish "Twelfth Night" that delighted the senses and tickled the funny bone. But William Shakespeare�s comedy about love triumphing over mistaken identity is a complex, even disturbing play, and this production went for the easy laugh every time. The result was crowd-pleasing and often hilarious but short on nuance � a sort of Twelfth Night Lite. The story begins with the courtship of Olivia (Catherine Lynn Davis), a countess, by Orsino, Duke of Illyria (Armando Duran), through intermediary Viola (Vilma Silva) disguised as the youth Cesario. Viola and her twin brother, Sebastian (John Hansen), have been shipwrecked, and each thinks the other is dead. Director Timothy Bond�s Illyria is exotic with the perfume of flowers, waves and music. It�s a setting for romance and illusion, a point which Michael C. Smith�s neo-tropical stage design and Helen Qizhi Huang�s fanciful costumes underscore. Orsino conceives a passion for Olivia, who has lost both father and brother to death and is keeping herself in seclusion. Viola, as Cesario, becomes a page in Orsino�s service and falls in love with him. Orsino sends Cesario to woo Olivia, who falls in love with him/her. So we have a young woman loving a man who thinks him a young man, a woman loving a young woman she takes to be a young man, and a man who loves a woman who isn�t interested because she loves his young man, who is a woman. Viola alone knows all this, and she shares it with us through poignant looks, ironic lines and double entendres. The knowledge is no help. Time will have to undo the complex tangle, she says, because she certainly cannot. While the would-be lovers are hitting speedbumps on love�s highway, sub-plots emerge. Sir Toby Belch (Ray Porter) carouses drunkenly at Olivia�s home with his pal and her suitor, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Dan Donohue), and Olivia�s fool, Feste (G. Valmont Thomas). Porter, Donohue and Thomas make their characters audience favorites with strong interpretations, although neither Sir Toby nor Feste are wholly positive characters. Belch lives off his cousin, rips off his friend Sir Andrew and hatches not one but two cruel schemes. As an outsider, Feste observes and comments on the action, usually with wit. But he has a darker side, commenting on the uncertainty of life, the inevitability of death and other melancholy matters. This side all but invisible in Thomas�s Feste, an over-the-top smart-aleck. When Olivia�s steward, Malvolio (John Pribyl), rebukes the men, they join with Maria (Susan Champion), Olivia�s witty chambermaid, in a plot to bring him down. Pribyl�s Malvolio is the ultimate Puritan, an old killjoy who harbors his own vanities as he suspects darkly that someone, somewhere, is having fun. Champion is bright and suitably conniving. The plotters use a spurious love letter to trick Malvolio into appearing before Olivia dressed ridiculously and behaving madly. Pribyl�s scene in double-gartered yellow stockings is masterful. Another hilarious scene is the duel between the cowardly Aguecheek and a frightened Cesario after Sir Toby goads them. The arrival of Viola�s brother, Sebastian, and his sea captain friend and rescuer, Antonio, ensure the lovers� identities will eventually out. The undoing of Malvolio continues. In a scene rendered with a neat stage trick, he�s locked in a dark dungeon as a madman and taunted by Feste. The truth comes out, the twins are reunited, and love is fulfilled, even if it requires a realignment of the lovers (Viola marries Sebastian, whom she has "mistaken" for Cesario; Orsino translates his affection for Cesario into love for Viola as a wife). Sebastian is the key to resolving the play�s sexual ambiguities. He�s the lover Olivia needs, the ideal that Viola has been acting out, the natural man Orsino has lost in his posture of the doomed romantic. On the Elizabethan stage, with women played by men, the sexual and homosexual overtones would have been even more complex, with scenes featuring a boy pretending to be a woman making love to a boy pretending to be a woman pretending to be a boy. Malvolio is a problem. Abused and disgraced, he is driven out to whatever fate awaits him as Feste sings a world-weary song. But why? Since he was never a threat to the lovers (that came only from their own delusions), his character falls short of classic villainy. It�s a disturbing question. But in this light, bright production, it never quite casts its shadow. "Twelfth Night" is perhaps Shakespeare�s most complex comedy, its anti-romantic overtones leaving us a bittersweet flavor. But not this time. Despite a great look and some fine performances, "Twelfth Night" missed that flavor by throwing out the bitter and keeping the sweet. "Twelfth Night" was the first play ever presented by the festival, which opened with it July 2, 1935. This version ran three hours, 15 minutes with a brief intermission. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. 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