Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen many productions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. My favorite has always been the production directed by Andrei Serban for the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1989. The production starred Cherry Jones as Viola and Diane Lane as Olivia (both pictured at right), with a marvelous supporting cast that included ART stalwarts Thomas Derrah (Feste) and Jeremy Geidt (Sir Toby). The Romanian director has always been known as an experimentalist, and his Twelfth Night featured Sir Toby watching cartoons on television and Sebastian meeting Antonio in a gay bar for sailors with an actor dressed as Shakespeare sitting in the back drinking a beer and taking notes.
Last night, I saw a production of the play that was equally memorable, a wildly cosmopolitan version of the play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. It was directed by Declan Donnellan and designed by Nick Oremerod, who are the founders and co-Artistic Directors of the Cheek by Jowl Theater Company, which now makes it home at the Barbican Centre in London. What makes it "wildly" cosmopolitan, however, is the fact that it is performed in Russian with English titles. The titles are taken from Shakespeare’s text, but according to a Russian student who accompanied me, the Russian was far more verbose and far less "literary" than the titles. The production was originally produced by the Chekhov International Theatre Festival in 2003; three years earlier Donnellan and Ormerod had formed a sister company in Moscow (Donnellan jokingly refers to it as "Cheek by Jowlski").
I’d just been making the argument, earlier in the day during the lecture for my "Conversations of the West" class that as the students read Hamlet over the weekend, they should think about the ways in which Hamlet suggests that Aristotle may have underestimated the importance of diction to the succesful creation of tragedy onstage. In the Poetics, Aristotle valorized plot above all, but is plot the most powerful element of Hamlet, I asked. Is there not something in the way Shakespeare puts words together in all of those marvelous speeches ("To be or not to be …"; "O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"; "The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.") that is crucial to the play’s evocation of tragic experience?
And here I was watching a production of Twelfth Night whose implicit premise was that Shakespeare’s play can transcend the language in which it is written. Ben Brantley in it this way in his review for the New York Times:
The glorious surprise of this ”Twelfth Night” … is in how it finds an alchemical substance in Shakespeare that transcends the verbal. … Mr. Donnellan and Mr. Ormerod … make the heretical case that the essence of Shakespeare isn’t exclusively linguistic. The words, it seems, are but steppingstones to a universal pattern of images and insights about human behavior and the perplexing world that thwarts and shapes it. Shakespeare’s first language, it would seem, is not English, after all; it’s Theater.
Well, it worked marvelously, because the actors were superbly evocative in both speech and gesture; the elegantly minimalist set and lighting created beautiful tableaux and arresting moments; and Donnellan’s direction emphasized physical comedy, constant movement, and quick pacing. Frankly, I’m not sure it would have worked with a play like long, wordy play Hamlet.
The all-male cast meant that the production could draw on some of the ambiguities of Shakespeare’s original stagings, which featured men playing women playing men in plays like Twelfth Night and As You Like It. The "women" in this production — the Andrey Kuzichev as a lithe Viola; Alexey Dadonov as a straight-backed, almost regal Oliva; and Ilia Ilin as a limber Maria — were uniformly persuasive. The ambiguities of the final recognition scene came across beautiful (especially in the tense shrug offered by Orsino [Vladimir Vdovichenkov] after he has mistaken Sebastian [Sergey Mukhin] for Viola/Cesario. Ormerod’s design emphasized the contrasts of black and white, with black dominating the first act, full as it is of mourning and melancholy, and white dominating the second, with its hopes for renewal and rebirth — with a stunning intrusion of black in the person of Malvolio at the very end. Every now and then, Donnellan would freeze the action during an aside by a character, as if to suggest the momentary imposition of order amidst chaos, but these moments seem, in retrospect, motivated by the desire to build up to the final freeze-frame, Malvolio’s "I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you," which Donnellan turns into the final spoken line of the play. While the rest of the cast, dressed in off-white costumes, is revelling to Feste’s lounge-lizard version of "the rain it raineth everyday," Malvolio returns, clad once again in the butler’s black tuxedo, to serve champagne and offer his promise of revenge — as an aside to the audience. I’ve never seen it played this way, but it made for a stunning theatrical moment.
My students seemed to enjoy the play, though almost none of them seemed to have ben familiar with it beforehand. I found myself wondering what it what be like to encounter Twelfth Night for the first time in this way. What was getting across to them? And how different was it from what would have gotten across were the watching a standard, untranslated production of the play. Did they, paradoxically, get more out Shakespeare’s text last night because they were reading it as they watched, rather than listening to it? I also wondered how different an experience my Russian student in attendance was having. Did the play she was watching seem more contemporary because of the translation, with the titles seeming like a bad translation written by non-native speakers of English? (An effect enhanced, perhaps, by the fact that the titles were full of typos.)
What I found myself wondering, finally, was lost in the translation. And what was gained?
The production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was fascinating. I had never read this play or seen any productions of it before, so I was excited about being exposed to something new, but when I found out that it was in Russian with English subtitles, my heart dropped. I wondered if it would be any good because the actors were not speaking English. This version of Twelfth Night, however, proved that Shakespeare is universal if presented properly. These actors were able to engage the audience, and maintain my attention, for the most part, although they were speaking Russian and had few props. The actors’ tone, emotions, movements and facial expressions among other things were sometimes more important in helping me comprehend the play than the subtitles. Nevertheless, the subtitles were a necessary component of the play. Ultimately, I understood the plot and found myself laughing constantly at the various scenes of comic relief featuring Sir Toby, which were my favorite parts. I also loved the singing clown. He was hilarious. I was curious as to why the men who were playing women did not attempt to sound like women with more of a high pitched voice. I also liked the modern feel of the play. For example in the scene when Sir Andrew Aguecheek (I loved how the characters pronounced his name in a comical fashion) fought Sebastian, who he thought was Cesario/Viola, he had boxing clothing on. I don’t think there was a boxing match in Shakespeare’s version, but that scene worked.
I thought the attire of the cast was beautiful and unique and I was especially interested in the transition from wearing black clothing to ight colored clothing. This device was symbolic of the characters going from darkness or ignorance to lightness or knowledge, and also hinted that the truth would be revealed. I also felt that the lighting was able to set the mood. In addition, the use of the curtains was important. By the end, we learned that Cesario or Viola and Sebastian were twin siblings. It took me a while to realize that the character Viola was a girl disguised as a man since it was an all male cast. Sometimes, I found myself caring more about reading the subtitles than watching the acting. Sometimes, I was so enthralled by the acting that I forgot to read the subtitles so I missed a few important lines. Sometimes, I was frustrated because a simple three or four word phrase took a long time for the actor to say in Russian. Other than that, I enjoyed the play and this Russian production proved that Shakespeare’s magic could transcend across various languages with out his crafty English rhetoric.
The production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” by Declan Donnellan was amazing. Having been told that the play was going to be in Russian with English subtitles (or in this case titles) I was extremely excited. I have been feeling home sick for the last couple of days and hearing my native language spoken so well and fluently was unbelievable. I don’t know why, but I had expected the actors to be Russians that moved to the states a long time ago and now spoke Russian with an accent. To my surprise I was familiar with some of the actors in the play.
Mikhail Dementiev (Curio) is a celebrated actor in Russia. I took a few courses of theatre history in the Russian Gerasimov State Cinema Institute (VGIK), which is where he graduated from. I was also familiar with his acting from a really famous movie in Russia “Khrustalev, the Car.”
Dmitry Dyuzhev (Sir Andrew Agurcheek) is a very well known actor in Russia. I’ve seen him in two films: “The Ark” and “Brigade.”
Finally, Dmitry Shcherbina (Malvolio)-an actor that I personally know and have already adored from many plays in Moscow. I’ve seen him at the Mossovet Theatre in King Lear, Madame Bovary and as ironic as it is in Twelfth Night. All of which he played in spectacularly. After the play was over at BAM a few friends of mine and I came up to him and congratulated him on his great performance.
Having read the play and seen it twice in Russia I didn’t expect it to be much different, nor more fascinating. However I was extremely wrong. The entire cast was comprised of men, something I don’t remember witnessing before.
Considering the fact that Russian is my native language and English is my second language I didn’t have to look at the titles. At one point I looked up and realized that the titles were very brief and simple, unlike the language spoken by the actors. I looked around worried that my friends wouldn’t understand the play, but the actor’s performance was so good that at times it wasn’t even necessary to read the titles. All of my friends seemed to enjoy the play very much.
I had a great time and the chance to feel like I was back home in Russia for a few hours. Priceless.
Now, I’m excited about the future plays.