Word: text
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...complete title--Twelfth Night; or, What You Will. The most famous words in the whole play are, oddly enough, the very first ones: 'If music be the food of love, play on.' Ha, look at the next words: 'Give me excess of it.' And Shakespeare has filled his text with references to songs. Of course we can't have singing without dancing too. I'll advertise my version as 'a music and dance extravaganza of Twelfth Night.' [Webster's Dictionary defines 'extravaganza' as something "wildly irregular."] Malvolio has a phrase in the play, "the fools' zanies." I'll just interpret...
...time. And I do want the show to be entertaining above all, so I'd better play up the farcical opportunities and invent a lot of by-play. Still, I only have two hours and a half. Well, I'll do a little pruning here and there in the text; and I guess I'll just have to omit the whole taunting of Malvolio in prison, though I realize it's the climax of the entire anti-Malvolio plotting. This does mean I'm upsetting Shakespeare's delicately balanced construction; but that will have to yield just this once...
...different in Elizabethan times, since actresses were interdicted and both roles were taken by young boys. Miss McKenna is able to convey a zestful boyishness without ever losing her innate womanliness. And more than any one else in the cast, she pays attention to the poetic qualities of the text (though on opening night she sometimes lowered her voice to the brink of inaudibility...
...reason for the general excellence probably lies in the fact that the text does not require the players to convey the music of poetic lines--an area in which the company as a whole is weak. This is not to say that the writing in the play lacks interest; far from it. The text is a rich mine of various kinds of lower-class Elizabethan speech, including laughable treatments of French and Welsh dialects. It is filled with captivating puns, doubles ententes, and novel images; and it constitutes a veritable dictionary of original invectives, insults, and expletives...
David Hays has designed suitable movable additions to Rouben Ter-Arutunian's flexible basic stage, so that the swiftly changing geographical demands of the text do not inflict between-the-scenes waiting. Tharon Musser's lighting is admirable, particularly the moon-swept night lighting...