Review: A warm and lovely ‘Twelfth Night’ on the islands at Chicago Shakespeare Theater
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Snow on Halloween in Chicago. Cue a chilled-out Illyria with an island vibe, a reggae-underscored tale of love and misadventure set amid the driftwood and sand of Negril, maybe, or the denizens of Mo Bay’s Hip Strip. The audience responded like cruise ship passengers finally arriving in Ocho Rios and feeling the sun.
Tyrone Phillips, the Jamaican-American director behind this strikingly emotional “Twelfth Night,” is an open-hearted and inclusive kind of director and, unsurprisingly, the warmth and optimism he wears on his sleeve attracts precisely those kinds of actors. I’ve admired Phillips’ work for years but he’s not had a mainstage chance like this before and, as far as I know, has never directed Shakespeare at this level of production.
So this delightful show really is a triumph for him: Phillips has kept the running time trim (just about two hours with an intermission) and his very savvy and clear cut of the play focuses on the main plot lines of twins lost at sea and found on land, as you would expect, but also on the themes of the play that clearly interest him the most, beginning and ending with the fragility of life.
There, he has the help of Israel Erron Ford, who plays Feste and whom Phillips allows to stand both inside and outside his Jamaican world, as William Shakespeare intended. Ford is a fine, emotionally charged singer and I can’t recall another “Twelfth Night” that afforded a Feste with such accessible resonance. He’s the key to the play, of course, a constant reminder to us that we have to live in the moment, grab our opportunities for happiness and understand that nothing is for ever:
“What is love?” he sings. “‘Tis not hereafter. Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty. Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”
Indeed not, alas and alack.
I’m told Phillips just got married prior to the final few rehearsals and, while art cannot ever be assumed to imitate life, if there ever was a show that looked like the work of a very happy director and cast, this is that production. And it is most contagious.
Beyond Feste, ”Twelfth Night” always has to be driven by the determination of Viola, aka Cesario (Jaeda LaVonne), to push on for happiness with Olivia (Christiana Clark). So it goes with LaVonne, an actress who can drive Shakespeare poetry with energy and verve and yet also assume the right kind of guileless air that makes Viola one of Shakespeare’s greatest characters, an example of optimistic youth, buffeted by the waves of life but never sunk and a keen improvisor, adapting her feelings and goals as new circumstances present themselves.
Phillips’ show, which I saw after watching a different show with a heavy, intrusive concept, also is scaled just right. Some new directors at big theaters cue up all the resources they can and squelch the humanity. But that’s not true here and certainly not of Sydney Lynne’s sweet setting, filled with warm pastels, rich vistas and the kind of simplicity I’ve rarely seen at this theater. Add in Christine Pascual’s ebullient costumes and Xavier Pierce’s lighting and you have a lovely little affair that somehow seemed to shrink down the size of the Courtyard Theatre and focus the audience, even when the projectionist Mike Tutaj made it rain.
Which brings me to Paul Oakley Stovall’s Malvolio. Stovall was once a fixture in Chicago but hasn’t been so much of late, having worked for President Barack Obama and toured with “Hamilton.” How terrific to see his work again: commanding with apt pomposity; profoundly vulnerable, a Malvolio prerequisite; and in the end self-aware. Reluctantly. But still.
As with the music of Bob Marley. I always think “Twelfth Night” actually is a call for balance, albeit tilted in the favor of love. It understands loss and sadness, of course, and the damage often done by one human to another, but it resolves in such a way that it seems to call for each of us to recognize our own existence as brief travelers over the land, often doomed to make decisions that fail to take the shortness of our lives into account. A match, you might say, for “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.”
I’ll end with some critic’s guarantees on this special one: You will follow the plot with ease. You will smile. You will not be bored. You will leave feeling warmer and maybe even closer to the person in the next seat.
All that and Shakespeare, too.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Twelfth Night” (4 stars)
When: Through Nov. 26
Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $38-$92 at 312-595-5600 and chicagoshakes.com