Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare

  Bartlett: The play is written under the sign of festivity, of license, of misbehavior. But it's not called "First Night"; this is the time when things go a bit too far, when people are at the end of their tether ...

  In Shakespeare's time, Illyria was a state on the Adriatic coast (Croatia today), but the name is also evocative of "illusion" and "lyric" ("If music be ...") and "Elysium": so should we think of it as a place of reality or of fantasy? And did your thinking along those lines shape you and your designer's choice of set, costumes, and temporal location?

  Mendes: I didn't think of it as a place of reality at all. For me it was a place of illusion. The thing that came most to my mind when I was working on it was Alice Through the Looking Glass--Lewis Carroll's twisted logic, his peculiar brand of English melancholy. We even had Viola step through a looking glass. I tried very hard right from the start to create a sense of it being a dreamscape. When Emily Watson, who played Viola, arrived in Illyria she was talking to a succession of mysterious figures in the shadows--one wasn't sure if she was awake or dreaming. And yet, rather like Lewis Carroll, once we entered this world, once we went down the rabbit hole, there were many things about it that reminded us of England, and of a specific social structure. When we took it to Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, beyond the mirror was an enormous pool, almost like a lake, covered with floating candles. Candles were also suspended over the acting area in both directions. That was a nod to the candlelight by which the play might first have been performed, and also to the sense of Christmas time and of Twelfth Night itself, but that gave it an even more dreamlike feel. So our Illyria had a firmly nonnaturalistic framework holding within it something resembling a real world.

  Donnellan: All of Shakespeare's plays take place first and foremost on a stage, and this space changes and articulates shifting worlds and different realities. For example, in the history plays Shakespeare is not putting the "real" medieval world on stage but creating another theatrical world. We cannot understand Shakespeare if we reduce him to an everyday naturalism or historical accuracy. If we get locked in the merciless logic of spatial or indeed psychological logic, we miss the point.

  In Twelfth Night Shakespeare presents a number of different worlds. There is the world of Olivia's house, which is very different to Orsino's court; running between them is the dangerous space of the path that separates these masculine and feminine spaces. Danger hides on this path, but so does love. Pirates get arrested but rings are found.

  For me as a director, "space" is the very first challenge to be investigated. Investigating the worlds of Shakespeare's plays is the first step in all our rehearsals.

  Bartlett: I think you have to play for real, and let the fantastical take care of itself--at least you do when you are working in the Courtyard Theatre, where no one needs to be told they are in the world of theater and make-believe. There were certain specific realities I wanted to root the play in. It is a play about the strictly hierarchical, upstairs/downstairs life of two aristocratic country houses. It is a play in which homoeroticism has to be part of the cultural zeitgeist, so that neither Antonio's homosexuality nor Orsino's ... confusion (!) need any great explanation. It is a play in which we have to take for granted that a single woman as intelligent and wealthy as Olivia can both dream of running her own life and yet absolutely be denied that possibility by her society--i.e. everyone expects that she should marry her neighbor now that her brother and father are both dead. A costume-drama version of the turn of the nineteenth century seemed to provide all the right clues ... but apart from the costumes, the stage was bare--letting the words and the music and the laughs do the work.

  In one obvious respect our production was "fantastical"--in order to provide more good roles for women than is normally possible in a Shakespeare company, I cast three actresses in three of the male roles, capitalizing on the fact that cross-dressing and sexual license and low comedy are all central to both the atmosphere and the mechanics of this particular play. If men can drag up on Twelfth Night, then surely women can too.

  Social status is a big part of the comedy. Did that also affect the period and setting you chose for the play?

  Mendes: Yes, the world of the play needs a hierarchy, especially in Olivia's household. So that of course did affect the settings and clothes. I feel you do need to sense that Sir Toby and Maria are somehow "below stairs" in the servants' quarters; you need a sense that Malvolio is a steward, that Fabian is a footman of some sort. Beyond that, the one character who I felt needed to be defined and clarified by costuming was Feste. My feeling with all Shakespearean fools is that they need to be firmly rooted in the world of the play; the moment they stand outside it and don the comedy checked suit and a little trilby your heart sinks. So for me, Feste was a tramp, a drifter; he's been in the household before, he's gone away for a while, he's moneyless, he travels with a knapsack and his guitar. It seemed to me to be very important that you get the sense of him as somebody who might be found on a street corner, with his cap in hand, begging for coins. He's obviously impoverished and he obviously needs to earn a crust. That was important, as it somewhat clarified his dislike of Malvolio.

  And of course for Malvolio's downfall to work he needs to be established as a household steward. Then when he attempts to seduce Olivia, he is attempting to subvert the social order, to overturn the hierarchy of the household.

  Donnellan: Our approach to the play and its period and setting is fluid throughout the rehearsal process; but of course no human beings have ever invented any world devoid of status or hierarchy (though many have died in the attempt!).

  Bartlett: See my previous answer!

  Shakespeare had boy-girl twins, who are never identical, but mistaken identity is at the heart of the play: how much of a factor is the "identical twin" question in casting Viola and Sebastian?

  Mendes: I remember casting Troilus and Cressida at the RSC when Nick Hytner was also casting King Lear, and Nick said, "Oh, how much the twins look alike is the sort of thing that boring people talk about in the car on the way home!" Clearly you shouldn't cast two people who look wildly different, but whatever they look like, two good actors will move you in that final reconciliation scene come what may--it's a beautiful scene. Beyond that, dress them in the same clothes, the same hat, and if they're vaguely the same height that should be enough.

  Donnellan: To a certain degree, and we would certainly avoid choosing actors who looked wildly different, but we also rely on the fact that the audience have both the desire and the capacity to suspend their disbelief!

  Bartlett: Provided that one isn't a foot shorter than the other, the rest is acting--and pacing; if you stage the "near misses" of one scene moving into another right, then the audience does all the work of the doubling for you.

  What does disguise--and playing at gender-bending in particular--do for Viola?

  Donnellan: I think it's more important to ask what these elements do for us. The complexity of love and particularly the fragility of human desire and sexuality is so crafted by Shakespeare that most, if not all, of his plays leave us asking questions about ourselves. Certainly the ambivalence of sexuality as it is figured by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night transcends most modern reductions into gay and straight.

  Bartlett: Initially, it allows her to maintain some privacy while she sorts herself out--then it allows her everything; to lie, to flirt, to be with men ... to explore herself. She needs to do this, because she's a powerless girl: Olivia and Maria manage to do all of those things without cross-dressing, but they're older, and wiser--and desperate!

  "Cesario, come--For so you shall be, while you are a man": whereas Rosalind in As You Like It and Portia in The Merchant of Venice return at the end in female garb, Viola remains in male. We're even told that the Captain who is looking after her women's clothes has been imprisoned at the behest of Malvolio. Is this just a technicality: there's no time for a quick change? Or does it go deeper?

  Mendes: I don't think Shakespe
are ever does something like that accidentally. I think it does run deeper. I think the sexual ambiguity, which he plays on the whole time, is something he wants to linger on at the end, and I think it makes it much more interesting. You could say that what fascinates Shakespeare most of all are the unfinished stories, Iago, Leontes, Jaques--and here, of course, Malvolio. "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you" is the line that hangs over the end of the play even more than Viola's last moments, or "The Wind and the Rain."

  Bartlett: Yes, it goes deeper--if Viola is played by a young man. Both Orsino and the audience (at least in our production) hugely enjoyed the fact that he is "really" getting off with a gorgeous boy at the curtain call. It explains such a lot about him, don't you think?

  Orsino can sometimes seem a rather shallow courtly lover in the opening act, then he's offstage for a very long time before his return at the end: does this present peculiar problems for a director and an actor?

  Mendes: Orsino's a much better part than people think. I don't think it does present a problem. Mark Strong was sensational in the role. I think he's lovesick: in other words he's in love with the exquisite pain of being in love--a love that is unrequited. So once you've established that he is actually hungry for that state, is trapped in it, and is almost unwilling to come out of it, I think it's a wonderful part. Very funny actually, and rather touching. So it didn't strike me as an issue.

  Donnellan: It is structurally curious; rather like the absence of Post-humus through the middle of Cymbeline, but this is possibly explained by the fact that the actor playing Orsino may have been playing another part. Orsino may have doubled as Maria--in which case the actor playing Orsino would probably have been rather short!

  Bartlett: If you think he's shallow in his first scene, then you definitely have a problem. If, however, you think he is a powerful portrait of a powerful man--handsome, charismatic, sexy, obsessed, passionate--with some of the most drop-dead lines in the (or any) play, then you're all set for a great evening. If you think obsessive behavior, sexual ambiguity, and laughable human folly are "shallow," then you shouldn't be directing Twelfth Night ...

  Are we meant to believe in the marriage between Sebastian and Olivia?

  Mendes: Yes. I think the easy way out when you direct it is to ironize those things in the last acts of Shakespearean comedies. The really difficult thing to do, like at the end of The Winter's Tale when Camillo and Paulina suddenly pair off, is to make the audience believe it. You could say that the real challenge of the play is to make these impossible moments seem possible.

  Donnellan: The triangle of Sebastian, Antonio, and Olivia is complex. Both Antonio and Olivia give Sebastian money, which you notice he never manages to refuse. Olivia herself has the line: "For youth is bought more oft than begged or borrowed," which is remarkable. Certainly Sebastian's conversion from Antonio's love-object to Olivia's is very fast. It's hard not to believe that this rapid change is not lubricated by cash. Even Orsino is impressed by Olivia's wealth!

  However, who are we to judge? When Sebastian sees the new sun, he sees that it is glorious. Perhaps he is more sincere than he seems. Perhaps he has been transfigured by love, like his sister. We often forget that Sebastian also disguises himself as Roderigo at the beginning of the play. Why should he do this? He is a complex character and far removed from a two-dimensional juvenile lead.

  Bartlett: Well ... it's not going to last very long, is it? He's over the moon--she's rich, beautiful, and (best of all, if you're a horny teenager who rather enjoys people falling in love with him) she is sexually and emotionally impulsive. She, however, is humiliated, furious, trapped in a marriage even more ridiculous than the one she escaped from with Orsino. Hardly a recipe for success. On the other hand, he is a very handsome young man, and well educated, and so who knows ...

  Music seems particularly important in this play. What implications did that have for your production? And what about Feste's songs in particular?

  Mendes: Huge. Music starts the play, and sets its tone. It's crucial. It seems to me that when songs are sung, unlike any other play in the canon with the possible exception of As You Like It, people simply sit and listen to them. "Come Away Death" and "O Mistress Mine," they sit and listen, and then at the end we the audience sit and listen to "The Wind and the Rain." They're very static songs: even at the beginning with "If music be the food of love, play on," Orsino sits and listens. The act of listening to music is actually pivotal, it's central to the play. The music itself, therefore, has to have an emotional resonance. I was really pleased with the music, which was written by George Stiles. It's one of the things that I remember most from the production.

  Donnellan: Music is integral to all our work. We began rehearsals by investigating the space through music, thus music was always crucial to our investigation. Feste's songs are crucial as he is the paid entertainer, exactly akin to the actors onstage.

  Bartlett: Music is in the heart of the play. It opens it and closes it. The music is incredibly interior--apart from the "catch" scene, all the music is about hidden emotion. The last song, for instance, is the exact opposite of the communal merrymaking that usually closed an Elizabethan comedy ... that's why I put Feste and his grand piano in the center of the stage. For all its glorious mechanics, it's a very introspective play ... it probes the heart, which is music's job.

  At the beginning of the play Feste has returned after an unexplained absence. Did you and your actor feel it necessary to devise a "back-story" in order to get inside Feste's character?

  Donnellan: Well, I have worked with five different Festes over the years and with each we discussed what might have happened previously, his possible reasons for leaving the house, and each time I think we came up with different conclusions! But such work is crucial to give authority to the actor. Incidentally, most of these "discussions" would have taken the form of physical exercises.

  6. Feste's songs are crucial "as he is the paid entertainer, exactly akin to the actors onstage": Igor Yasulovich as Feste and Dmitry Dyuzhev as Sir Andrew in Declan Donnellan's 2007 production during the RSC Complete Works Festival.

  Bartlett: Well, he's a musician, and a comedian, and they're always temperamental bastards ... Olivia just kicked him out for a while, and he needed the work, so he's been moonlighting at Orsino's.

  How did you stage the great letter scene?

  Mendes: Once we decided to place it inside his bedroom it unlocked all sorts of interesting things. Because it was in his private space you immediately got drawn into his private fantasy world in a much more serious way. There was a sense that he did this all the time, that he had a very vivid fantasy world which involved him and Olivia on a regular basis. This wasn't new, it was something that he'd already been fantasizing about for years. He lay on his bed and was clearly about to indulge in a sexual fantasy, and there was a feeling that we shouldn't be in this room with him, and neither should Sir Toby, Andrew, and Fabian, who were hiding behind the screen.

  Donnellan: We decided to take the character of Malvolio absolutely seriously. This made the pain and humiliation that Malvolio experiences all the more serious and real, which in turn made it all the more funny. Comedy always has its feet in pain!

  Bartlett: It staged itself. We were working on a bare stage, and didn't need a box-tree because we already had a grand piano to hide behind, so it was just a question of working out, move by move, how three people could hide from a fourth on a bare stage as he shared his predicament with the audience ... my only rule was that he could never stand still or face one way for very long--otherwise there's no gag, they're just safely upstage and he's safely downstage. The whole point is that the scene is a virtuoso demonstration of the fact that love is blind; even though they're right there with him, he never sees them. Of course it helps if your Malvolio (John Lithgow) is six foot three and a natural physical clown.

  Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are often perceived as especially lovable characters, but Malvolio's view of them as idle drunken
parasites is not without justice, is it?

  Mendes: No, I think they're complete liggers! They're total leeches, especially Sir Toby. They live off other people, they don't do a stroke of work. But at the same time they're not entirely wrong when they seem to ask, "What's the point?" For me, the key to Sir Toby and Sir Andrew is that they're older characters, coming into the twilight of their lives, dealing with past disappointments, and learning to come to terms with compromise. They're not young and vivacious, they're drinking to stave off melancholy, and to forget. There's a tangible sense of disappointment about them and Toby's cruelty emerges out of that: his own self-loathing, his own sense of regret. However, it is Sir Toby who in many ways drives the action of the play, particularly in the second half.

  Donnellan: No, I think there are things to be said for and against all of Shakespeare's characters. Shakespeare is anti-sentimental and he is great precisely because he is nonjudgmental about his characters. Like Chekhov, Shakespeare invites us to draw our own conclusions about the characters he presents.

  Bartlett: Some of my best friends are idle, drunken parasites. What's your point?

  Is the gulling of Malvolio taken too far, when it comes to the darkened room? And does he recover his dignity at the end of the play? Whether or not his final exit line ("I'll be revenged ...") gets a laugh--or what kind of laugh it gets--is often the test of a production.