William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” is essentially a combination of knowing wit, crude hilarity, romance and heartbreak. In their attempt to do justice to the play in their anniversary production, Stagecraft Theatre succeeds in evoking side- splitting laughter as well as absolute silence (at times) from its audience- the latter a praiseworthy feat in itself.
The set is simplistic and effective, with Stagecraft’s trademark artistic panels holding a place on their own and laughing at the characters constantly, as the walls of a small hut on a gypsy island. The most novel component of the stage is the pony tethered at the far end, which definitely adds to the feel of a gypsy island, and doesn’t seem to be too disturbed by the constant changes in light and sound around it. Indeed, its twitching ears and mild natural reaction to the loud drunken revelry being enacted right beside it earn an additional brownie point. On the downside, it visibly shied away from the touch of the noble male protagonist Orsino, taking away from his image as a wise, good gypsy ruler who should be good with his cavalry. But the actor can hardly be blamed for that.
Gold Rate
Wednesday March 2025
Varun Vij looks and portrays the character of Orsino, the lovelorn ruler and master, to the T, as effective and convincing in his declarations of passion (behind his subject’s back) as he is in his utter confusion in the climax, when mistaken and disguised identities finally reveal themselves. His discussion with Viola disguised as Cesario about love at the beach was one of the most engrossing scenes of the play, as much for the dialogue as for Viola’s love and frustration made clearly evident by Bianca Nazareth Arya. Bianca’s portrayal of this complicated play’s most complicated character, the large- eyed, innocent yet sensible woman disguised as a man, with humour, pathos, deliberate shifts from feminity to attempted manliness and her echoing cries of “Olivia, Olivia!”,deserves applause.
Vikash Khurana and Dharmesh Thapar as Sir Toby and Sir Andrew respectively, are flawlessly hilarious and win the audience over with their jovial revelry. The laughter that they evoke from the audience with their uninhibited antics leaves nothing to be said- they are the most impactful in the play. Supantha Bhattacharya deserves as much credit- no, much more credit- for his sheer lack of inhibition and for coming across as courteous, haughty and crassly foolish, equally. While the image of him dancing in yellow tights and behaving as crudely as the play demands will be difficult to erase from the brain, his inherent pride and condescension as the hypocritical Malvolio came through only during his monologue upon discovering the false letter. Till that point, he only appeared overly disciplined and earnest- as a member of the audience, I didn’t resent him as much as I should have.
Anamika Sawarkar as the beautiful Olivia, indulgent in her emotions, is effectively morose, sarcastic and in love. Her transformation from the mourning sister to the love struck suitor is worth mention. Sonal Anand Trivedi is naturally chirpy, clear with her quips and her judgement of the other characters and funny with her slapstick jokes. She does full justice to the originally male character of the jester Feste. Her voice is magical, her choreography is very good. It is she who managed to hold the audience spellbound and silent during one of her haunting fireside songs on the beach. Special mention has to be made of the lighting and sound- the mood creation in each of these scenes was beautiful. Swati Sani as Maria, Raveesh Jaiswal as Sebastian, Sparsh Bhure as Antonio and Guramol Singh as the nameless sea captain play their roles well.
The set, as mentioned earlier, is simple and effective. The uneven layers of sacks on stage, while making a very good impression of sand, do create hurdles for the actors. Credit has to be given to all the dancers- drunken and otherwise- for their smooth performance on such uneven ground. The nervousness did show on some gypsy faces, however, in contrast to the enjoyment evident on the faces of their partners. I strongly recommend you go see the spectacle- you will not be disappointed.
– Meghna Majumdar
