We stepped a little out of order so that we could watch Twelfth Night on Twelfth night.
It is light and silly and this is a sweet version of the play. This is also the last Shakespeare play that I saw live.
Given all that you’d think I’d remember it better. I conflated Merry Wives of Windsor with Twelfth Night and kept waiting for Falstaff to appear and try to woo some ladies. It occurred to me about 10 minutes in that in my head Sir Toby is Falstaff.
Oh dear.
Nevertheless, I watched the right play at the right time and enjoyed it.
I’ve seen this version before and feel like it was well cast and well acted and overall very well done for a play I consider somewhat weak.
I mean the twins even look like twins!
And it’s all pretty, apparently, forgettable.
Even while I was watching it I was reimagining it as a modern LGBTQ flick where a woman who falls in love with another woman (in drag) just stays in love with her
and a man who pursues unattainable women just goes off with the dudes he’s been denying himself.
Then I had another one where Sir Toby and Falstaff are the twins and they cavort around drunkenly lead on by Feste.
Then I realized I was doing Shakespeare fanfic and put a brake on it and tried to pay attention.
That I forgot the play and had to drag my attention back is a good indicator that I was a bit bored by the it all.
It really is well done but I always have a hard time with the twins comedies. They just don’t grab me.
The real stand out here for me is Ben Kingsley who played the most intense and interesting Feste I’ve ever seen.
My best friend used to quote Feste a good bit and I have a special fondness for him. I often imagine him while thinking of Hamlets poor Yoric. It’s the strangest and most inspired bit of casting here where all the cast is good
I sometimes have a hard time with this play because of Malvolio’d treatment. In the play it goes from funny to cringe to abusive, real quick, and I don’t like it. This is 100% due to difference in humor and acceptable behavior from then to now, but at best it reminds me of a sitcom (I find sitcoms to be very uncomfortable and don’t watch them) and at worst it’s just cruel.
Is Malvolio an irritating ass? Yes, of course. Does he deserve his treatment? To me? Absolutely not.
In an only slightly earlier time Sir Toby and Malvolio would have been one dimensional parts in a morality play, they work like that. There is the gluttonous rich man and here is the upright steward. You could put them into Punch and Judy and they would work, but Shakespeare gave us gray areas and humanity. The pious man is insufferable in his inflexibility, the libertine is repulsive in his revenge.
This is Shakespeare doing The Great Shakespeare Thing in a play that to me is only mediocre. All hail Shakespeare.
Anyway…
Happy end, happy end, happy end.
*Here is your unsolicited advice to watch P.D.Q.Bachs The Stoned Guest which satirizes many of these comedy tropes in operatic form.
Twelfth Night - 3.5 stars for cinematography and casting
Mom score - 0 no moms
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