Twelfth Night Redux
Roughhouse Theatre’s ‘Twelfth Night’ returned to Bristol in July 2008 as part of the Bristol Shakespeare Festival. Bringing together the original cast in a new and exciting venue, this was the perfect opportunity to explore the play’s 1930’s Berlin setting even further, and use the solid grounding we already had to push the boundaries of dark and light in the script to new distances.
It was an incredibly liberating experience to arrive in a rehearsal room already knowing the play back-to-front, and with established relationships between the whole cast and crew. Truly a unique opportunity to hit the ground running and explore the text with a freedom and thirst which can only come second time around; improving, discarding, developing and detailing as we went along. The result was a very different play from the one seen in the Alma Tavern earlier in the year, not least because of the amazingly atmospheric venue we found ourselves in, the Bristol Bierkeller. Usually a live music venue, its dark and mysterious feel suited our interpretation down to the ground, and the much larger acting space and vast wooden tables which formed part of the set allowed so much more scope in terms of the physical – running, dancing, climbing and exploring the space in a way that was never possible within the limits of the studio space where this show was first performed. The result was something much bolder, darker and more visceral, but we hoped still with an intimacy and clear sense of truth running throughout.
Music played a large part in the original conception of this show, and ‘Twelfth Night Redux’ brought this to a new level. With a group of live musicians supporting myself as Feste and the actor playing Curio, we were able to place the show firmly within its cabaret club context, and audiences enjoyed live music both pre- and post-show as well as throughout. My songs included Kurt Weill’s ‘I’m A Stranger Here Myself’ and ‘Speak Low’, ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schon’, an old Yiddish song made famous by the Andrews Sisters, as well as some commonly associated with Marlene Dietrich: ‘Falling in Love Again’ and ‘Lola’, both of which I sang in German.
Full cast list and further details can be found on the original ‘Twelfth Night’ performance page.