I entered the lottery early Saturday morning and won two tickets to the Sunday matinee of Twelfth Night with Randy Harrison at the Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, DC this past weekend. I was able to fly in and out the same day. The hall is huge and holds about 800 people and the tickets are assigned seats so you don't have to wait in a long line for a seat once you pick up your ticket.
Just as I am not a Samuel Beckett fan, I do not care for the Elizabethan prose of Shakespeare so I struggled to follow the dialogue particularly when it came at me rapid fire. If I had read the play beforehand, I probably would have been able to follow the dialog better but, alas, I did not. I don't remember having this problem with A Midsummer Night's Dream in Montgomery a few years ago. I only remember that it is one of my favorite of Randy's performances.
Fortunately, I had the synopsis of the plot and that along with the great visuals of the play being acted out made me really enjoy it because the situations and characters are foolish and funny and hilarity ensues. Randy (Sebastian but I will refer to him as Randy) is only in one short scene in the first act where you find out that he did survive the shipwreck that his twin sister Viola thinks he perished in. He has a friend Antonio with him who says he once fought against Duke Orsini and gives him a bag of money to keep safe for him. Viola washes up in Ilyria and disguises herself as a man, calls herself Cesario and enters into the service of Duke Orsini who is trying to court the Lady Olivia who is also in mourning for her dead brother and will not accept his amorous attentions. She becomes the emissary between the two of them and Olivia, thinking she is a man, immediately falls in love with her. Horrified, Viola/Cesario tries to deflect her attentions back to the Duke even though she herself has unrequited feelings for the Duke who thinks she is a man. Confused? With a short bob of a haircut, she no more looks like a man than Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria so you must suspend belief for the sake of the story. Randy's hair is the slicked back style he wore to the prom and they both wear dark pants, white shirts and short navy jackets with big white buttons down the sides. The fact that they are both short in size and slim in stature makes them semi believable as interchangeable twins.
I have to say that Tom Story, who was one of Amadeus' venticellis and also starred with Scott Lowell in The Heidi Chronicles at the BTF, stole the show as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a foppish and dimwitted suitor for Olivia that her drunken Uncle Toby tries to foist on her. He danced and pranced all over the stage in a very flamboyant and flaming way and screeched and squealed like a girl on several occasions. He even has a great mock fight with Randy over Olivia's affections which is encouraged by the drunken uncle and his imbibing running mate Fabian. There's a whole other subplot in the play with Uncle Toby, Fabian and Viola's lady-in-waiting Maria forging a love letter from Olivia and sending it to her manservant Malvolio which makes him think she is in love with him so he will act the fool. There's also a old jester who sang several songs and was part of this plot.
When Randy returns and meets Olivia, she thinks he is Viola/Cesario and throws herself at him once again and he responds in kind unlike his sister. He sweeps her off her feet and they share many passionate kisses and at one point they are pulling off their clothes as they exit the stage. Every time someone falls in love, rose petals flutter to the stage and by intermission they are falling in heaps. In the second act, the whole stage is covered in rose petals and many of the actors roll around in them from time to time. There are huge murals of roses on the stage which sometimes the actors hide behind or at least pretend to which makes for a really funny scene with Toby, Andrew and Fabian holding smaller ones in front of their faces as though they are invisible. In one scene, Olivia and Viola/Cesario keep getting down closer and closer to the stage as they talk until they are both spread-eagle on their stomachs facing each other. There is a lot of humor, tomfoolery and fun in this whole production especially the second act which engenders plenty of snorts and giggles.
Randy and Olivia marry and then Randy has a scene alone on stage for a soliloquy after the wedding in which he is shirtless and barefoot wearing only a tight pair of black pants in which he looks slim and trim. He has many more scenes in the second act and there is much fun with the mistaken identities and genders when Antonio sees Viola/Cesario and wants his money which of course she doesn't have nor does she even know him. When Olivia sees Viola/Cesario after the wedding and she doesn't seem to know that they have been married, more confusion ensues. Finally the brother and sister meet again and see that they are both alive to the perplexity of both Duke Orsini and Olivia. Orsini had shown some feeling toward Viola/Cesario when she hinted that she was interested in him but thinking her to be a man, he was denying his attraction. Now that the two are face to face as twins, Olivia is happy to be with Randy and Orsini proceeds to unwrap Viola who has bound her breasts until he sees that she is indeed a woman and he sweeps her up in his arms before the reveal. I know I am forgetting a lot but it was 3 hours long and there was much to see and absorb. That's why I like to see the plays at least twice. Randy was as good as he always is and makes the most of his small role.
When the bows were taken, the two couples were the last onstage. As they exited, Randy playfully chased Olivia off the stage grabbing at the back of her wedding gown. It was Randy being Randy.
sunshine