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How can a theater company make a 400-plus-year-old play feel fresh? Speculative Drama’s answer is to perform Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, under the direction of Myrrh Larsen, not on a stage but in a dive bar—specifically Angelo’s on Southeast Hawthorne.
Twelfth Night is a problematic play. On the one hand, it’s a raucous celebration rife with mistaken identities, a love quadrangle—or is it a hexagon?—and the comeuppance of a puritanical party pooper. On the other hand, the script is also packed with puns that were probably a scream in 1602 but have even some Shakespearean scholars, let alone the average theatergoer, scratching their heads today.
Larsen and their cast and crew nimbly leapfrog over this issue by making the audience part of the flow of the play. As Angelo’s customers sit or stand amid a buzz of conversation, recorded music and clinking ice, the voice of Orsino, Duke of Illyria (David Bellis-Squires), begins the show by rising over the din, saying, “If music be the food of love, play on…”
So what if there’s a Big Buck Hunter arcade game behind him and the red and blue lights of a Pabst sign in the next room? Orsino looks as if he belongs in Angelo’s as he strides through the crowd, drinking from a tall glass with a green straw. In this environment, even his iambic pentameter sounds as natural as water rippling over rocks.
It also helps that Shakespeare populated this later comedy with a plethora of drunken characters, including the most obvious one, Sir Toby Belch (Isabella Buckner), who literally staggers around with a big smile. There are also the metaphorical drunks, though, like Toby’s rich niece, Olivia (Ariel Puls), who greedily imbibes the wine of grief over her dead brother, and Orsino, who’s intoxicated by the idea of his unrequited love for her.
The music playing in the bar (also directed by Larsen) neatly fits the play, too. For the lovelorn Orsino, it’s Bruce Springsteen belting out “Hungry Heart.” For Olivia, who becomes enamored with the reluctant Cesario (Orsino’s servant, who’s actually Viola, dressed as a man), it’s Beyoncé chanting, “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it.”
Adding to the ambience are Megan Skye Hale’s costumes, which suit the contemporary scene, while also accentuating the characters’ personalities. Olivia’s red stiletto ankle boots and supple leather pants accentuate her sudden onset of sexuality, while her servant, Maria (Gillian Wildfire), wears a stack of metal bracelets that flash like her eyes when she’s pranking her enemy, Malvolio, the uptight steward of the house, who’s dressed in gray and black.
The joke on Malvolio (Elizabeth Neal) is a central part of the play: Maria and her pals convince him that Olivia will return his love if he wears yellow stockings and garters that crisscross his legs. Ha ha ha. Hale manages to make this visual gag actually funny, though, by criss-crossing thin yellow straps that practically glow in the dark over much of Malvolio’s body. Neal, too, makes the most of her role by wearing a stonelike expression in the first part of the play, then, once in the garter getup, transforming into a loose-limbed cabaret dancer who pulls a black glove off her hand with her teeth.
Over the centuries, audiences have taken pleasure in despising Malvolio, but Neal lets us feel his vulnerability. Sure, he’s a pain when he scolds Sir Toby for drinking, but he also dreams of having a grander life, and seeing that secret wish exposed and ridiculed right in front of us, as opposed to up on a stage, is poignant. Likewise, the clever and capable Viola/Cesario (Rachel Lindsey Routh) is touching when her face lights up at the sight of her twin brother, who she believed had drowned.
Not all is ideal in this neon-lit Illyria, though. The room where Olivia does some of her best scenes is small, and at the Jan. 6 preview performance, the doorway to it became a bottleneck as the audience slowly filed in. It can also be tiring to keep getting up and following the actors throughout Angelo’s for over two hours, although most of the action is visible (or at least audible) from the main room if audience members want to snag a seat there.
In all, the delight of seeing the play in a unique location outweighs the pitfalls, especially as the show ends with the joyful spectacle of the entire cast cutting loose and singing karaoke.
By turning Shakespeare’s characters into people we might rub shoulders with in our everyday lives, the production raises a new question: What does it even mean to us in 2024 that Viola is pretending to be a man…especially since her “disguise” includes jeans, Converse and a hoodie, an outfit that might be worn by a person of any gender today?
As masterful as the Bard was, in this case, it’s the contemporary artists, with their verve and vision, who hold us in awe.
SEE IT: William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night plays at Angelo’s, 4620 SE Hawthorne Blvd., rsvpdx.com/twelfthnight. 7 pm Wednesday–Saturday, through Jan. 20. $5-$40. 21+. Masks encouraged.