The Flint Theatre's production of Twelfth Night is a rock-and-roll remix of the play. Oliver Dimsdale, artistic director, tells Shrabasti Mallik why none of the characters appear in periodic costume
William Shakespeare probably wanted Twelfth Night to be a musical play which explains the beginning line, “If music be the food of love, play on...” Ever since the Bard penned it down sometime in 1601, Twelfth Night has been adapted on stage uncountable number of times. The play about twins — a brother and a sister, who are shipwrecked, has also found its way in the script of several movies.
But it is for the first time that Filter Theatre from the UK has brought their rock-and-roll version of Shakespeare’s much loved play to India. Oliver Dimsdale, artistic director, told us that the show was made nearly 10 years ago on the request of Sir Michael Boyd, the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. “He said that he had 20,000 pounds and asked if we could do anything with Twelfth Night,” said Dimsdale.
They agreed, but they did not have as much time as is needed to go through an entire production. They then decided to go on with it and see what came out of the rehearsal room after 10 days. It was planned that after 10 days they would stop and just put out what they had. “That released the pressure of having to do the whole play. We kind of cut many lines inside the play — lines which would have been a little harder to explain to a contemporary audience. But we kept the meat of the text in the play — the thrust of the linear narrative, which is the heart of all of his plays,” Dimsdale shared.
“We kept looking at the play and the fact that it is about music and human beings who are desperately trying to fall in love or chasing someone else. Every single character in the play is in love and can’t quite get what they so badly want. And the end of it all, we realised that we just needed the actors on the stage,” said the artistic director.
He recalled the time when the play was staged for the first time, ever, probably in london in the 17th century. “The actors would have probably showed up with no scenery at all, may be just a banner, with themselves and Shakespeare’s words. We have a lot of sound design and music and composition but we tried not to go too far off from the text. So what you will hear, will more of less be exactly Shakespeare’s words, give or take some contemporary moments. And we have as much fun with it as we possibly can,” he explained.
The attraction of the play, however, is the fact that it is a musical — a play where every character has his or her own sound, their own genre of music. A perfect echo of the opening line of the play, you can say. So while Feste’s sound is rock-and-roll, Orsino embodies jazz. Olivia, on the other hand, who mourns the death of her brother and father, has a more subtle mourning tone to her sound. “It’s slow and somewhat mournful but not like really mournful,” explained the artistic director who credits Tom Haines and Ross Hughes for the incredible background score.
Another interesting fact about the play is that none of the six characters in the play wear costume, except for Sir Toby Belch, played by Dan Poole. “We have tried to keep it contemporary so we do not have costumes,” said Dimsdale, who portrayed the role of Belch in the first production of the play 10 years ago.
“The music is like a character. It does not feel like a separate entity,” said Sandy Foster who plays the role of both Feste and Maria.
Twelfth Night narrates the story of how Viola, in order to hide her identity, dresses up as a man and goes to serve Orsino, the Duke of Illyria as a page boy. When asked about how relevant this is issue of disguising oneself for whatever reason it may be, Dimsdale said, “It is extremely relevant. Wherever you are in the world or whatever cult you come from, you have to put on some suit of armour before you walk outside the door in order to survive even in the simplest job. But the real roots that we have to hang on to inside the context of Shakespeare’s verse, is that Viola is stranded in a different country where she believes that she lost her brother. Rather than collapsing, she has to get up and pull herself up and has to survive. I would have imagined that that very journey is the same that many people have to do in every single context you can ever imagine. Moreover, Shakespeare makes her a ‘he’ so you can image how difficult it would have been for a woman in those times to make her own way.”
Foster pointed out that even in the UK where things look fairly equal, we still live in a world where women are the underdogs. “Had we been born as men, life might have been easier in many respects and that’s the same thing in the UK, US or anywhere else in the world,” she said.
Rob lynes, director, British Council concluded, “It’s a matter of great shame that even after 400 years later, people still has to disguise who they are. The sad thing is that it seems to grow worse, not better. But it feels nice to bring the Flint Theatre to India before the 400th death anniversary of Shakespeare. Theirs is a unique take on the play.”
Flint Theatre will be delivering 20 performances of Twelfth Night in eight cities across the country as part of their India Tour throughout November and December. In some places they will also be conducting workshops.