LOS ANGELES TIMES
November 28, 2003
THEATER BEAT
Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" is like a three-seated
seesaw, and the fat man usually wins. That is to say, it's a trick to balance
the play's central love triangle with the two prankish subplots driven by that
minor-league Falstaff, Sir Toby Belch. Many productions slight the mistaken
romance and let the drunken knight walk away with chunks of scenery in his
teeth.
Director Anne McNaughton's new production doesn't quite have that
problem--in part because her Toby, Tony Burton, is more a cuddly, red-faced
chucklehead than a wild party animal, but mostly because it's hard to steal a
show that's barely there. The design has a generic sheen, with Esther
Blodgett's colorful costumes striking a familiar note between faux-Moorish and
Renaissance Faire and J. Kent Inasy's imposingly stagey set lighted evenly by
Luke Moyer.
With few exceptions, the cast is playing at Shakespeare, not
committing to characters. They speak the speeches relatively painlessly, and
mostly with understanding, but only Meeghan Holaway as love struck noblewoman
Olivia appears to have smoldering depths beneath her glittering surface.
None of the other actors--and certainly not Maria Kress' blandly
smiling Viola--give her flint to spark off. The superficial approach ends up
serving Philip McKeown's starchy Malvolio well; in the context of this dully
dutiful production, McKeown's dogged attachment to the obvious at least gets
him his laughs. Other performers score some light, grazing comic blows, from
Burton's elfin Toby to Khamara Pettus' sinuous Feste. But the Bard's
topsy-turvy carnival of confused lust and humiliation has seldom looked so sane
and polite.
"Twelfth Night,"
The Company Rep, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8
p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Dec. 21. $20-22.50. (323) 960-4412. 2 hours, 25
minutes.