Posted June 29, 2009
Main Street Stage is proud to present their second annual Shakespeare production, Twelfth Night. The play will preview Thursday July 30th as a pay what you can night and run Fridays and Saturdays through August 15th at 7:30 p.m. There is a Pay-What-You-Can Community Night on Thursday August 13 at 7:30. There will be a matinee on Sunday August 2nd at 2 p.m. and a free "Shakespeare by the Pond" performance on Sunday August 9th at 2 p.m. at Windsor Lake.
One of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, Twelfth Night is a story about love, music, mistaken identity, and a world in which perception and reality frequently are at odds with each other.
Viola is shipwrecked upon the shores of Illyria, where Duke Orsino rules. As a woman who has lost all to the sea (including her twin brother, Sebastian), she decides that her safest plan is to disguise herself as a man, Cesario, and find work in service to Orsino. The duke is madly in love with a neighboring countess, Olivia, who rejects his tenders of love stating that she'll continue to mourn for her brother and father for another seven years. As may be expected in any of Shakespeare's mistaken identity plays, Olivia falls in love with Cesario, Viola falls in love with Orsino, and the love triangle creates many humorous and tragic encounters. Meanwhile, Toby Belch (Olivia's drunken uncle) and Maria (Olivia's handmaid) plan their own acts of deception, trickery and revenge. Together, they plot against Malvolio, Olivia's puritanical servant, whom she describes as "full of self-love." They trick him into believing that Olivia is in love with him and set about getting him to dress and act with such madness that he is imprisoned and shut up in a dark room until the truth of the trickery comes to light. In addition, they fool the naive Sir Andrew Aguecheek, an unsuccessful courtier to Olivia, into fighting with Cesario to defend his honor, convincing the knight that this will surely win him the hand of Olivia. Full of mistaken identity, gender bending and fools, Twelfth Night is a play brimming with laughter.
The decision to mount Twelfth Night this summer came from a desire to bring comedy to a community emerging from a dark winter and tough economic time. People simply need a good laugh! After holding a public reading of portions of the script that included talk back with the audience a few months ago, and collaborating with a group of artists and community members, the themes that continued to rise to the surface were: deception, love, music, trickery, and reality vs. perception. From these discussions, the decision was made to set this production of Twelfth Night in the summer of 1969 in Coney Island, NY. The amusement park feel, the "summer of love" environment, and Woodstock all make this a perfect environment for the life of this timeless comedy.
Twelfth Night will be directed by Melissa Quirk and the cast includes local actors Mollie Remillard, Kelli Newby, Eric Auld, David Lane, Barb Cardillo, Alexia Trainor, Sean McHugh, Jack Sleigh, Darren Fitzgerald, Jeremy Kerr, Rachel Barker, Julia Les and David Winn
Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for seniors and $20 for general admission. To reserve tickets for this production please call the box office at 413-663-3240 or reserve on line at www.mainstreetstage.org.
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