Featuring a female Malvolio, Harrodian's bold take on Twelfth Night aims to be 'fun, frivolous and a bit bonkers'. We met the cast and Director, Drama teacher Sam Sugarman, in rehearsals (above)
Does Shakespeare’s sense of humour stand the test of time? Or is his 17th century brand of comedy too dated – or even too dull – to keep audiences with 21st century expectations and attention spans amused? When it reaches the stage of the Harrodian theatre on the 29-30th January, Harrodian’s fast-moving production of Twelfth Night may help to shatter any negative preconceptions about Shakespearean comedy. ‘The thing I like most is turning his plays on their heads so you forget you’re watching Shakespeare,’ says Drama teacher and Twelfth Night Director Sam Sugarman (pictured above, in rehearsal). ‘It’s going to be fun, frivolous and bit bonkers.’
The thing I like most is turning his plays on their heads so you forget you’re watching Shakespeare,
Sam Sugarman, Drama teacher and Director Twelfth Night
The audience can certainly expect a few surprises. There’s the setting, for a start. Inspired by the Theatre’s Art Deco period character, Mr Sugarman opted to run with the natural grain of the architecture. He transplanted Shakespeare’s Illyria to 1920s America and set the play in a plush and stylish New York 'speakeasy', complete with dining tables, with the actors adopting the roles of staff and cabaret performers and interacting with the audience as if they were customers. ‘I have a background in immersive and musical theatre ,’ he explains. ‘I thought it would be fun to do something that made the most of a beautiful and authentic space.’
The approach to the script, which features a female Malvolio, is equally bold. Mr Sugarman took an abridged version of Twelfth Night as a starting point and built his own version around it encouraging his ‘quick-witted, energetic and expressive’ cast members aged from 10-14 ‘to bring their own ideas that fleshed out characters and parts’. The result is ‘a collective endeavour’ which runs for around 70 minutes, around half the time of the original play. ‘I don’t want to waste people’s time,’ he says. ‘My rule of thumb for any theatre production is to try to make it brilliant and short.'
My rule of thumb for any theatre production is to try to make it brilliant and short
And so to the key question: Will Harrodian’s riotous, slapstick take on Twelfth Night really make us laugh out loud? ‘We’re bringing out the humour by making it utterly ridiculous,’ says Mr Sugarman. ‘I can’t be sure that everyone will laugh as much as we have, but in rehearsals we've been in hysterics.’
Twelfth Night is at the Harrodian Theatre at 7pm on 29th and 30th January. Tickets cost £5 each and are available from reception.
