About the Production Paul Crewes Rachel Fine Artistic Director Managing Director Filter’s Twelfth Night By Paul Taylor PRESENTS When the Royal Shakespeare Company Woolf could not have anticipated, but I illustrate Malvolio’s motivations, first commissioned Filter to make a think she would have acknowledged, the Filter discovered that the steward is a creative response to Twelfth Night, as imaginative force of Filter’s response to frustrated rock star who has pathetic, a feature of the great Complete Works the play’s strange acoustic atmosphere. private dreams of strutting his stuff in project that unfolded in Stratford in The stage for their version of Twelfth some vast stadium. Filter Theatre in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company 2006–2007, it might have been thought Night is more reminiscent of a rock insane that the rehearsal time was just gig than a straight play, strewn as it It is a key feature of the Filter style that ten days. But there may well have been is with sound equipment and musical they aim not at some staid simulacrum a method in that technical madness. instruments. Viola is briefed about or complete transcription of a classic her new surroundings by the level, play, but rather, choose to concentrate Fast and foreshortened conditions impersonal tones of a BBC shipping on, and arrestingly highlight, certain for preparation of this event pitched forecast seeping through a transistor undervalued aspects of it. Why do Filter into roughly the same kind of radio. In a brilliant stroke, characters they not try to commandeer the full delirium and purposeful perversities press microphones to their brows and orchestra? I think that the underlying TWELFTH with which Twelfth Night confronts the these devices seem to be able to pick impulse – whether it be in Brecht shipwrecked Viola and her sundered up the music of their minds. It’s a great (whose Caucasian Chalk Circle they identical twin when they fetch up on the joke that when Sir Toby Belch first does exhilaratingly refreshed) or in Chekhov shores of Illyria at the start of this play. this, nothing whatsoever is heard. But (whose Three Sisters they revivified Twelfth Night is ambiguous, and not then he’s an anomaly here in more ways so that you seemed to be watching just sexually – with its gender-crossed than one. Decked out in a huge ruff, the original Russian actors deposited NIGHT antics that propel a girl disguised as boy doublet and pink hose, this tyrannous through violent time-lapse photography BY CREATED BY DIRECTED BY into a bout of painful proxy wooing on drunken sponger is a chaotic tribute to onto the stage in the shape of their behalf of a man who desires a girl who the RSC’s wardrobe department. First contemporary equivalents) is to try to William Shakespeare Filter Theatre Sean Holmes promptly falls in love with the disguised heard reciting Hamlet’s “To be or not make audiences actively participate emissary who, in turn, becomes smitten to be…” speech and addicted to cans of as they would if challenged with a MUSIC & SOUND BY by the man. Illyria is a topsy-turvy land, Special Brew, he is the only character completely new work. Filter – who Tom Haines & Ross Hughes betokening the licensed misrule of in “period” dress, the others all wearing seem, to me, to be the most creative Twelfth Night (January 6, the Feast of the the casual contemporary mufti of jeans beneficiaries of the methods patented ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS Epiphany) that was the order of the day and sneakers. by Simon McBurney and Complicite – Oliver Dimsdale & Ferdy Roberts in Elizabethan and Jacobean times. The do, of course, also, create their own play is also a slippery, double-natured The production’s alternative, punk free-standing pieces, pre-eminently the being. It looks back, in the farcical mix- style can be traced back to a series superb Water (2007). This piece made STARRING ups caused by twins, to an early drama of workshops conducted by Filter and myriad-minded play, metaphorically Francesca Zoutewelle as Olivia such as Comedy of Errors; and it looks director Sean Holmes at the National and plot-wise, with the idea that, in a Gemma Saunders as Feste/Maria forward, in its marine imagery and the Theatre Studio on the subject of globally-warming world, the molecular Jonathan Broadbent as Orsino/Sir Andrew Aguecheek charged intensity of its reunions, to the the body. The rehearsal process of structure of water, which longs to bond Amy Marchant as Viola/Sebastian late romances, such as Pericles and The researching problems in small groups with other elements, offers a flexible Winter’s Tale. with a single brief and quick deadline image of how the geo-political world Ferdy Roberts as Malvolio and then collectively pooling the results needs to re-connect with itself in order Oliver Dimsdale as Sir Toby Belch The imaginative use of sound is a Filter was initiated there. It’s one of the to head off planetary disaster. speciality. No play of Shakespeare’s hallmarks of Filter that the immediacy MUSICIANS yearns for music and song so much as of rehearsal room technique is carried The company are developing a cult status Alan Pagan & Ross Hughes does Twelfth Night. Orsino, the Count through into the style of the productions (the Lyric, Hammersmith is said to have who is as much in love with love as he when they are shown to the public. This received more letters of celebration is with the rich Olivia, calls for it in the is the case here in wonderful conception and more letters of complaint than ever COMPANY STAGE MANAGER comedy’s famous opening speech: “If of Malvolio, the repressively puritan before after their Three Sisters). But Christie DuBois music be the food of love, play on,/Give steward who is a walking affront to the then experiment is, by its very nature, me excess of it…” Reviewing a revival at spirit of comedy: self-satisfied, self- challenging - and to divide audiences is US TOUR PRODUCER the Old Vic in 1933, the novelist Virginia deceived, socially ambitious and, in his a great deal better than to leave them Woolf was eloquently impressed by this own mind’s eye, a great match for Olivia. numbly non-committal. Andrew Hamingson and Tim Smith quality in the piece: “the play seems… for Pemberley Productions to tremble perpetually on the brink of The technique, whereby a microphone Paul Taylor is the theatre reviewer for the music”. She writes of a Shakespeare pressed to the head seems to detect the UK’s Independent newspaper. whose whole mind is “mobilised and inner weather of the characters, was under control but with feelers left flying adapted, during rehearsals, in a manner MARCH 14 - 19, 2017, 2017 that sport and play with words so that that gave the company the clue as to Bram Goldsmith Theater the trail of a chance word is caught and how to play this marvellous part. By followed recklessly” pointing the microphone interrogatively Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission. at the musicians when required to PERFORMANCES MAGAZINE P15 About the Artists AboutAbout the the Program Artists FRANCESCA Shakespeare Film Company. He also voices the OLIVER DIMSDALE (Sir Twelfth Night with Filter (London/Touring); American Players Theatre production of In Acting production out of Brecht’s didacticism, true to the ZOUTEWELLE (Olivia) characters of Bill and Ben in the popular Toby Belch / Associate Director) Pornography by Simon Stephens (Traverse and Shakespeare by James DeVita. playwright’s vision. Three Sisters dusted off trained at RADA graduating in animation series Thomas The Tank Engine. In trained at Guildhall School of Birmingham Rep); The English Game by Richard cobwebs so often found in English Chekhov 2013. She has previously 2010 Jonathan was the recipient of the Fox Music & Drama. As Co-Founder Bean (Headlong); The Man Who Had All The Luck FILTER THEATRE (Producer) Led by actors productions, with a stripped-away design and worked for Filter appearing in Foundation Fellowship. He is represented by and Co-Artistic Director he has by Arthur Miller (Donmar Warehouse); The Oliver Dimsdale and Ferdy Roberts, and composer ensemble acting that served to highlight the A Midsummer’s Nights Dream Independent Talent Group. worked on all of Filter’s Entertainer by John Osborne (Old Vic); and Julius Tim Phillips, Filter has been creating innovative, timelessness of the writing; A Midsummer Night’s in Brisbane and Dublin. projects. Other theatre Caesar, The Roman Actor, Richard III and Measure exciting theatre since 2003. Filter’s unique Dream was a joyous, riotous interpretation of a Theatre credits include: Hamlet (Trafalgar AMY MARCHANT (Viola) includes: The Argument (Hampstead), A Tale Of for Measure (RSC); Moonlight and Magnolias, The collaborative language explores the interaction well-worn classic; Macbeth was a bold sonic Studios), All My Sons (Rose Theatre), Hamlet, studied English Literature at Two Cities (Northampton Royal Theatre); The Price (also for Tricycle). He was an Associate Director between sound, music, text, and movement, in a experiment, the wayward sisters delving into the Who’s There (Park Theatre and European Tour), The University of Leeds before Creeper (Playhouse Theatre); The Comedy Of of the Oxford Stage Company from 2001 to 2006 desire to make stories that awaken the imaginative dark recesses of the Macbeths’ minds through Into The Woods, Britannia Waves The Rules, Them training as an actor at LAMDA, Errors (Sheffield Crucible); Pravda (Chichester and has worked for the National Theatre and RSC as senses of an audience. Working out of a real sense sound alone; and Filter’s radical interpretation of Last Days Of Troy (Royal Exchange Manchester) graduating in 2013.