THEATER REVIEWS : A ‘Night’ to Remember at Bard Festival

In honor of the Sixth World Shakespeare Congress, whose theme this year is “Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century,” the Cultural Affairs Department and Will & Company are presenting plays by the Bard in all four theaters at Los Angeles Theatre Center. Following are reviews of the Wednesday night opening performances of all four shows by The Times’ theater writers.

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I can’t vouch for what goes on in three of the four LATC theaters now currently engaged with Shakespeare, but I can tell you this. I believe the scholars and “theater practitioners” from the Sixth World Shakespeare Congress who saw Cornerstone Theater Company’s gender-bending “Twelfth Night” on Wednesday had more fun than Congresses one through five combined. And they didn’t need any seminars to get the jokes, either.

In fact, as many liberties as Alison Carey’s funky adaptation takes--and it takes dozens--this festive “Twelfth Night, or As You Were” stays truer to the heart of this play than most strait-laced productions I have seen.

The play’s imaginary town of Illyria is now a naval base in Southern California, giving the troupe a chance to riff gleefully on the ever-current debate over treatment of gays in the military. The ROTC dropout Toby Belch (Diane Rodriguez) is played by a woman playing a man with a jet-black goatee and ponytail. Toby’s sweetheart, the maid Maria (Benajah Cobb), is played by a very large man playing a woman. When they kiss, the mind reels.

Further, the separated-at-sea twins Viola and Sebastian are both played by the agile and wonderful Christopher Liam Moore, so that when Viola disguises herself as the seaman Cesario, we have a man playing a woman playing an apparently gay man (as in Shakespeare’s own time--but different).

Lest all this sound like gratuitous silliness, recall that the play is in actuality about a man, Orsino (the funny Jamie Hanes), strangely attracted to his male servant who is, unbeknownst to him, really a woman. “Twelfth Night” is also about a woman, Olivia (Rebecca Clark, usually played by Page Leong), who falls for a male servant who is actually a disguised woman. So, if ever a Shakespeare play were ready-made to take on the complexity of attraction and the impossibility of making rulings about sexuality, this one is it.

Cornerstone certainly favors the play’s comedy over its lyricism. Fortunately, the clowning is first-rate, even if some of Carey’s contemporary jokes about mad cow disease or buying retail miss the mark. As Feste, a guitar-strumming hippie in clown makeup with a fondness for “Stairway to Heaven,” Shishir Kurup is an authentic and original clown who can transform the lowest of comedy into social commentary.

Ismael Kanater plays Andrew “Acheyface” as a beach bum so incompetent he seems to be on the verge of homelessness, and he is weirdly hilarious. As the uptight Petty Officer Malvolio, here a lesbian, Amy Brenneman does not show a natural comic flair, but she nailed the final scenes of Malvolio’s humiliation and declaration of revenge.

Under director Bill Rauch, this talented and sensitive cast sustains a vigorous reality for almost three hours, and the show is never boring. They are helped by the whimsical realism of set and costume designer Lynn Jeffries.

Cornerstone’s “Twelfth Night” was originally produced in 1994 at the Taper, Too, when the current gays-in-the-military debate was in its infancy. With last week’s federal appeals court ruling upholding the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, this “Twelfth Night” continues to have relevance. But, even more important, it has an original comic heart.

* “Twelfth Night, or As You Were”: Tonight at 8; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; Thursday, 8 p.m.; April 19, 8 p.m.; April 20, 2 and 8 p.m. All shows listed here are at Los Angeles Theater Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown, (213) 485-1681. Tickets: $15.