TWELFTH NIGHT -- Great River Shakespeare Festival

Great River Shakespeare Festival
script: William Shakespeare
dir: Alec Wild
cast: Erik Paulson, Christopher Gerson, Rob Eigenbrod, Brian Frederick, Shanara Gabrielle, Jack Sanderson, Michael Fitzpatrick, Carla Noack, Marcus Truschinski, Laura Coover, Doug Scolz-Carlson, Kim Martin-Cotten, Jonathan Gillard Daly, Jacques Roy, Jason Michael Spelbring
set design: Takeshi Kata
costume design: Rosemary Ingham
light design: Kenton Yeager
composer: Josh Horvath
sound design: C. Andrew Mayer

A shipwreck separates brother and sister twins, each thinking that the other has perished. The sister, Viola, disguises herself as a man to gain employment, and falls in love with her boss, while the woman her boss loves falls for Viola (posed as the man). A comedy.

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I'd seen this play only from a variety of videos, and was never very interested in it. This production, however, was quite outstanding.

The play flowed well, with constant movement on its very fluid-looking set. There were no gaps between scenes.

Director, Alec Wild, caught the humor of the play quite well, and this is where I feel that other productions I have seen have fallen flat. They key, in my opinion, is the role of Feste, the fool. While we certainly have to see that he really is smarter than most of the people on the stage, we also have to see that he knows his role as the fool, otherwise he comes across as arrogant and not at all funny. This was well played by Doug Scholz-Carlson.

The stakes that each character had set for him/herself, were appropriately high, and by letting us see and know these stakes, we appreciated the humor more and saw the love that they had for one another. This idea of setting the stakes high is essential for good theatre.

While I liked the basic set, I felt that the placement of a lone tree was quite odd and actually made a statement about solitariness that seemed inappropriate. I think that I personally would have placed the tree off to the side where it could be used, but would have left the stage feeling much more open.

A wonderful production.