I would find it hard to believe that anyone in the Twin Cities was having more fun yesterday afternoon than the audience with which I enjoyed Ten Thousand Things Theater Company’s production of Twelfth Night – unless it would be the cast, who seem to be having the time of their lives making the most of William Shakespeare’s brilliant comedy. The production, directed by Marcela Lorca, seems to effortlessly whip together madcap buffoonery and lighter-than-air romance, though my hunch is that a great deal of effort went into crafting this totally successful mounting that makes one of Shakespeare’s most frequently seen comedies seem brand new.
Lorca presents herself as a serious theater artist – which she has certainly proven to be – but she clearly also harbors an enormous reservoir of mischief and wit, as her production serves out a cavalcade of sight gags, mining every ounce of wordplay embedded in Shakespeare’s text, and comical depictions of incidents – such as a comic duel made all the funnier by having swords that seem to be constructed of cardboard tubes covered up and joined by colorfully patterned duct tape. She also keeps it moving at a brisk pace, so that the muscles used in laughing get a month’s worth of exercise in just one evening.
Of course, to bring such a madcap vision to life requires the right actors, and Lorca has assembled such a cast, a dream cast, for this production.
Talkin’ Broadway – October 2023