TWELFTH NIGHT (heads or tails)
by William Shakespeare
“★★★1/2 The production is an astute creation from Director/Designer Victor Kalka in that this Twelfth Night is a stripped back show with no trappings. ”
Twelve actors each learn two parts and toss a coin at the beginning of each performance to determine their character for the evening.
It’s still Twelfth Night with all its shipwrecks, lovers, drunks, fools, puritans, yellow stockings and rings, but it’s also an extreme experiment riffing on the play’s themes of identity, love, sexuality and fate.
Viola is shipwrecked in a strange land and believing her brother to be dead she dresses as a boy a goes into service for the lovesick Orsino. Orsino loves Olivia, who doesn’t want a bar of him, so he sends the disguised Viola to woo her on his behalf, only to have Olivia fall for Viola. In Illyria music is the food of love, and nothing is what it seems.
written by William Shakespeare
directed and designed by Victor Kalka
produced by Virginia Plain
stage manager Christopher Starnawski
costume designer Bronte Barnicoat
sound designer Ryan Devlin
composer Lachlan Massey
production manager Madeleine Picard
assistant director Isabella Milkovitsch
assistant stage manager Owen Hirschfeld
photography by Clare Hawley/Asparay Photographics
with Zac Bush, Eleni Cassimatis, Lucinda Howes, Cameron Hutt, Sarah Greenwood, Rowena McNicol, Lucy Ross, Michael Smith, Leonard Sun, Patrick Sunderland, Caitlin Williams, Harry Winsome
New Theatre, January 2021
“Kalka’s interpretation is an audience’s heaven. Typically, a production laden with hilarious and confusing plots, Kalka manages to also induce feelings of tragedy around human folly.”
