Rock around the clock with 'Twelfth Night'

Students of the Golden Leaves Shakespeare Company will perform "Twelfth Night," directed by Mari Reeves and set in the 1950s, Saturday and Sunday at the outdoor theater behind Alcouffe Community Center in Oregon House.

"The foothills community is so supportive and loving with everything we've been doing all these years. They make what I do so beautiful," Reeves said.

"This is about the 20th year that I've been doing Shakespeare with the kids up in the hills, and I've done 'Twelfth Night' set in many, many different time periods," she added.

Reeves said that she used to always stage the Shakespeare productions in the Elizabethan period, which was when Shakespeare lived. "But I realized that for Shakespeare to really resonate with kids — it's sometimes fun to set it in the original time, because it's cool for them to dress up in the costumes and be like the people were 400 years ago — but it's also cool to see that the plays and the situations and the characters also work for now, or for the 1950s," Reeves said.

She said she thought the 1950s period was a great era to stage "Twelfth Night" in because, "This play is so much about naughtiness and teasing and fun and goofing around. And we can do all these fun little dance steps and include a lot of great tunes from the era."

The cast includes Alice Capaccioli and Clio Capaccioli as the clown; Leandro Capuano as Malvolio; Eliza Cohen as Maria; Athos Cominotto; Nikita Gamolsky as Sir Toby Belch; Dasha Komissarchik as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Gima Kuliaev as Orsino, the duke; Liza Mamaeva as Olivia; Adam Seifert as Sebastian; and Leah Skoyles as Viola.

In "Twelfth Night," the duke, Orsino, is desperately in love with Olivia — "Who is normally a duchess, but we make her the owner and manager of a diner," Reeves said — but Olivia doesn't care anything about Orsino.

In a separate plot, a set of twins, Viola and Sebastian, were traveling on a ship that becomes shipwrecked. In the disaster, the twins are separated, and each believes that the other died.

"Viola decides, 'This is a man's world, so I'm going to dress up like a guy just to get along in the world. I don't want to be alone, on my own, as a woman,'" Reeves said.

Disguised as a boy, Viola becomes a servant of the duke, who sends her to carry his love letters to Olivia, "But then Olivia falls in love with Viola, thinking she is a boy," Reeves said.

A love triangle forms with the duke in love with Olivia; Olivia in love with the disguised Viola; and Viola eventually falling in love with the duke.

"Meanwhile, Sebastian, the other twin, washes up on shore, and he's trying to get along in the world without his sister," Reeves said.

"By the end of the play, the two twins are face to face — after lots of confusing events where each was mistaken for the other. They see each other face to face, and everybody ends up with the person they love.

"It has a very happy ending," she said.

"There's lots of rock 'n' roll, and there's some really funny, naughty characters throughout the whole thing who play tricks on each other. And a really cranky, kind of yuppy character — Malvolio — who pretends that he knows everything that everybody should be doing, so everyone plays really naughty tricks on him.

"It's very silly," Reeves laughed.

"If you want to see Shakespeare brought to life by kids who really know what they're doing and really enjoy what they're doing, set in a time in America's history that's just a lot of fun with great music, please come be our guest and see this play," she said.

CONTACT Susan Benitez at sbenitez@appealdemocrat.com or 749-4773. Find her on Facebook at /ADFeatures or on Twitter at @adfeatures.