Everything spins delightfully out of control in this brilliant comedy of crossed wires and
thwarted desires. “Twelfth Night” is named after the night of wild revelry that once marked the end of the Christmas season, and the play features just what a riotous party needs: a set of irresistible, flamboyant characters. There’s a plucky young woman who has just survived a shipwreck on a foreign coastline, and disguises herself as a boy for her own safety. There’s an officious, domineering major-domo who exasperates everyone around him, a jester who uses his barbed wit to tell inconvenient truths, and a prim noblewoman, deep in the strictest mourning, who suddenly finds herself madly infatuated with a stranger. But wait, there’s more: a boisterous drunken cousin; an inept yet disarmingly needy suitor; a beautiful, scheming maid with a fertile mind; and a wealthy duke so love-sick he can’t see straight. What’s not to like? 

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Yet there’s still more: “Twelfth Night” is one of Shakespeare’s wisest comedies. Each of the characters is both light and dark. They have hidden qualities, secrets, and feverish desires. They exaggerate their feelings, treat each other badly, nurse grudges, and take revenge in a hilarious practical joke that gets so far out of hand it stops being funny.

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We’re setting the story in the early 19th century, when a young women stranded in a foreign country would be desperately vulnerable. Who could blame her for dressing as a boy to try to make her way? Unless someone important in the neighborhood fell in love with the newcomer…

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