Twelfth Night - UMD Theatre

Shakespeare Takes on the Swinging Sixties

The Bark

February 10, 2023

Seth Roeser

 

The Rolling Stones, Sinatra and Shakespeare aren’t three acts I’d normally associate with each other, but UMD’s production of Twelfth Night demonstrates it may not be such a far out idea.  From the music, costumes, set and performances, everything comes together to form a charmingly goofy play.

Directed by professor Jenna Soleo-Shanks and student Lou Divine, the creative team behind the play made the groovy decision to set Shakespeare’s classic comedy in the psychedelic swinging 60s. 

And it works, man. 

If I had to describe the vibe, I would compare it to the Soul Bossa Nova scene from Austin Powers, but two hours long and with about 900% more instances of the word “perchance.”  The actors’ dialogue is still very much Shakespearean, but lead Hope Davis manages the impressive feat of delivering her lines naturally and understandably to a non-Shakespeare familiar audience (like myself). In fact, through their cadence and body language, the entire cast makes the comedy surprisingly easy to follow. 

To nobody’s surprise, Jack Senske once again proves his quality as an actor. Jumping from Stupid F##king Bird earlier this year to Twelfth Night, Senske shows that not only can he convincingly inhabit two very different roles, but be entertaining while doing it. 

Being set in the greatest decade for music means the crew got to take advantage of some great tunes for the soundtrack. That's right – music is performed throughout the play with the help of the ensemble cast. 

Music is embedded in the DNA of Twelfth Night. A quick Google search tells me it's the only Shakespeare play to open and close with music. The first line is even “If music be the food of love, play on.” 

With music being such an important part of the original, it's just as vital in this adaptation. The songs of the 60s sell you on its setting. And the songs they used are killer. Among other tracks, there's some Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Beatles and a cheeky little Rolling Stones reference for good measure. 

But if the set and the songs don’t convince you of the setting, the outfits will. Costume designers Moriah Babinski and Archie Reed knew what they were doing. Deklan Boren’s character, Feste, looks like the lovechild of Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Throw in the perfectly-fitting hair and makeup by Jeannie Hurley and you get a package that speaks for itself. 

If you are planning on seeing the production (you should be), I’d recommend reading a synopsis of Twelfth Night beforehand. Thanks to the cast’s delivery, you won’t be completely lost if you don’t do your research, but it's always better to be safe than sorry. 

The show is running until February 12 (ha) and tickets are available here. Depending on availability, rush tickets are available at the door.

 

 

Stupid F##king Bird - UMD Theatre

 

UMD Does a Play That is Not The Seagull

Lawrance Bernabo

November 5, 2022 

 

No, I am not going to put Stupid F##king Bird in the headline and I will resist the temptation to work in double hashtags throughout this review. Instead, I will just say that the production that opened at UMD on Friday night is an extremely engaging rollercoaster theatrical experience.

In case it is not obvious from that title, playwright Aaron Posner has stripped Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull down to the skeleton, with a few bits of flesh left (I recognized at least one line from Chekhov early on). There are a lot of interesting ways to characterize the end result, but I will go with dramaturg Gavin Orson’s use of “metatheatricality.”

The point is not that you need to know Chekhov to get this play. All that is necessary is that you love theater.

Chekhov intended The Seagull to be a comedy, but Konstantin Stanislavski’s production convinced people it was a tragedy. Posner’s version makes it a true tragicomedy.

In other words, you are going to laugh from the gut, but you are going to take a few punches there as well.

This plot presents a chain of unrequited love. Dev loves Mash who loves Conrad who loves Nina who loves Trigorin who loves Emma. That adds up to four intersecting love triangles, and establishes Conrad, the suffering young artist, as the play’s pivotal character.

Director Lauren Roth takes great advantage of the intimacy provided by the Dudley Experimental Theater. Every character has a lengthy monologue addressed to the audience, done up close and personal.

As Conrad, Hunter Ramsden goes on some epic rants, bringing as much passion as he does pure speed to these explosions. Posner likes to take sharp left turns with his dialogue, and Ramsden not only handles those, he constantly shifts his delivery as well. These rants break the fourth wall, and one of them is done without a net because it involves audience interaction.

Conrad is trying to revolutionize theater, to achieve something that is “authentic” rather than “make-believe.”

His muse is Nina, played by Isabelle Hopewell, the actress for his “Here We Are” work in progress and the object of his thwarted desire. In a show that has so many impressive moments of performance, there is Nina’s final monologue, where Hopewell had me laughing at a stupid T-shirt joke and then had tears in my eyes less than 30 seconds later.

Irie Unity plays the little black cloud that is Mash and it is wonderfully ironic how she expresses her depression in singing songs about how “life is disappointing,” while playing the ukulele.

Cody Do gives Dev a certain naïve charm that helps explain why the character is able to stay out of the line of fire when any combination of the other six goes after each other.

Maddie Froehle’s Emma is an actress who does not have to see a show first to denounce it. Emma is also Conrad’s mother, although in name only. Even when Emma says the right words, Froehle strips them of the requisite emotion.

What I loved about Luke Pfluger’s performance as Trigorin is that I hated the character the moment he walked on stage with that smug little smile. Trigorin quickly proved he was arrogant, pompous, and everything Conrad was not (and not in a good way).

The character caught in the middle by his exclusion from the love chain is Dr. Sorn, played by Jack Senske. We wait the entire play for him to confront the others, and I liked how he did most of it with his back to the audience.

He also has the best use of a Life Savers candy since “Horsefeathers.”

Chekhov questioned what theater should be in his day. He wanted realism. Posner wants something more. A measure of his success as a playwright and of these seven performers is that at the end of all three acts (intermission comes after the second act), the audience did not know it was time to applaud.

Because they were not watching the play, they were experiencing theater.

That, more than the romantic entanglements, is what you are supposed to take away from t##s play.

Almost made it...