Esther Williamson and Dan Crane, and a fish. (Taffety Punk/Marcus Kyd)
Taffety Punk, a ballsy team of thespian badasses, embraces Shakespeare’s goofy improbability with tenacity and vigor in Twelfth Night; or, What You Will now headed into the last two weekends of its run.
Director Michelle Shupe has taken the Bard’s shipwrecked rom-com and plopped all the love insanity, mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and buffoonery into a kind of prom-decoration fishbowl.
This could not be more perfect.
It’s an underwater world that is as beautiful and charming as it is self-aware, evinced in touches like a mechanically operated balloon fish that almost swishes away with the show as it interrupts several scenes, gliding by and bumping into the curtain trying to exit.
Like the sparkly seaweed set pieces and conk shell costume accessories, the premises upon which the plot hinges—like Shakeapeare’s reliable “twin” device, here that brother and sister Viola and Sebastian could be mistaken for one another, even by a lover (insert early ’90s Maury Povich joke here)—are treated both with sincerity and a coy wink to the camera.
In a dauntless cast of skilled actors, there is Kimberly Gilbert’s sarcastic, Bacardi-chugging Feste and her punk-rocker cohorts (Ian Armstrong, Jennifer Hopkins, Jared Mercier).
Tonya Beckman plays Olivia as a woman possessed by misguided affection, maniacally charging full-throttle into cartoonish seduction with cackles and red dresses, like Marilyn Monroe crossed with the Tasmanian Devil. Ricardo Frederick Evans plays the equally misguided-in-affections Duke Orsino as hilariously Emo and mopey, strumming his guitar, throwing tantrums, not seeing the potential for love that’s right in front of him.
Finally it is truly one of life’s great mysteries how Daniel Flint, as the clownish sycophant Malvolio, manages to keep a straight face while giving an impassioned speech in yellow-striped diving gear, punctuating his rant by flipper floor smacks.
But it is a great testament to Esther Williamson and Dan Crane as Viola and Sebastian, that amid the abundance of sight gags and Three Stooges-like antics, we are still genuinely invested in what happens to these siblings, as fate leads them toward one another after seeming to have lost everything.
Wiliamson, particularly, is a definition of control and subtlety; the steadily beating heart of this production’s living, breathing creature.
If Shakespeare’s not normally your thing, go see this, and be amazed at how modern it seems (like when a particular line about one character’s beauty is recited as a backhanded compliment implying plastic surgery).
If you’ve seen or read the play a thousand times already, go just for an injection of fresh blood to the material. Am I saying that this is the Lance Armstrong doping ring of awesome theater? Maybe. Very possibly.
Twelfth Night runs through February 23 at the Capitol Arts Workshop (545 Seventh Street SE); (202) 261-6612. Tickets $10.
