Malvolioliolio!
Aug. 6th, 2013 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberFor those local to the Boston area, I've been cast as Malvolio in Theater@First's upcoming production of Twelfth Night. Huzzah!
Details are here. Performances are...
This role is significant to me for a few reasons, not least of which being that I'm taking over partway through the rehearsal process for Ron Lacey, who had to withdraw for personal reasons. I say without exaggeration that there are few actors in our local scene whom I admire more than Ron, so these would be intimidatingly large shoes to step into even if I hadn't missed the first couple of weeks of rehearsal. And yet, I'm feeling pretty good about things overall.
First, there's nothing like a little extra pressure to get me to work my butt off on being ready in time, but there's another reason I'm feeling motivated here: Whenever I tell people I'm doing Twelfth Night, the typical response seems to be "Oh, you're playing Feste, right?". As much as I appreciate being assumed to be the fool (no, really!) :), Malvolio is, or at least can be, a character with a bit of a different flavor than my usual pure comic relief. I think this role is going to be a really fun way to stretch a bit, because our director (the excellent Ari Herbstman) wants to focus on the sympathetic side of Malvolio's story.
At first I was taken aback at the idea of not poncing around for an easy laugh; in most of the productions I've seen he's played as a sort of elizabethan Arnold Rimmer, which works really well, but obscures the fact that when you come down to it, he's really tragically bullied and abused in a way he doesn't deserve, however much Shakespeare's subtext seems to want you to think he does. He's the only person in Olivia's house who gives a crap about doing his job well as a matter of principle, and for his troubles he's literally tied up, locked in a shed, and gaslighted until he's almost completely broken.
I can actually kinda relate to Malvolio. Not the abuse part, thankfully, but in college I was that guy who looked down his nose at the drunken party people who were "wasting their education", and would storm upstairs to the dorm room with the loud music playing at zomg o'clock and shout "Geez, /some/ of us are trying to STUDY and/or SLEEP, fercryinoutloud!". This didn't exactly make me the most popular guy on campus, but like Malvolio I had this very strong sense of... propriety, and I took it personally when I thought people around me were acting improperly. To be honest, I don't think I've mellowed since then so much as surrounded myself with more compatible people (college friends who are reading this excepted, of course) ;).
So anyway, the approach we're taking is to try to portray Malvolio as that guy; less a comic buffoon, and more someone who has strict but not wholly unreasonable notions of what Right Living is, and little tolerance for people who don't. He hopes that enduring the mockery of his peers will result in him being recognized and rewarded, because in a just world Right Living is recognized and rewarded, but this is ultimately used against him and brings him low.
There's still plenty of room to make Malvolio funny, but I'm looking forward to seeing how human we can make him, too.
Details are here. Performances are...
Thursday Sept. 19 8 pm Friday Sept. 20 8 pm Saturday Sept. 21 2 pm (matinee) Thursday Sept. 26 8 pm Friday Sept. 27 8 pm Saturday Sept. 28 8 pm
This role is significant to me for a few reasons, not least of which being that I'm taking over partway through the rehearsal process for Ron Lacey, who had to withdraw for personal reasons. I say without exaggeration that there are few actors in our local scene whom I admire more than Ron, so these would be intimidatingly large shoes to step into even if I hadn't missed the first couple of weeks of rehearsal. And yet, I'm feeling pretty good about things overall.
First, there's nothing like a little extra pressure to get me to work my butt off on being ready in time, but there's another reason I'm feeling motivated here: Whenever I tell people I'm doing Twelfth Night, the typical response seems to be "Oh, you're playing Feste, right?". As much as I appreciate being assumed to be the fool (no, really!) :), Malvolio is, or at least can be, a character with a bit of a different flavor than my usual pure comic relief. I think this role is going to be a really fun way to stretch a bit, because our director (the excellent Ari Herbstman) wants to focus on the sympathetic side of Malvolio's story.
At first I was taken aback at the idea of not poncing around for an easy laugh; in most of the productions I've seen he's played as a sort of elizabethan Arnold Rimmer, which works really well, but obscures the fact that when you come down to it, he's really tragically bullied and abused in a way he doesn't deserve, however much Shakespeare's subtext seems to want you to think he does. He's the only person in Olivia's house who gives a crap about doing his job well as a matter of principle, and for his troubles he's literally tied up, locked in a shed, and gaslighted until he's almost completely broken.
I can actually kinda relate to Malvolio. Not the abuse part, thankfully, but in college I was that guy who looked down his nose at the drunken party people who were "wasting their education", and would storm upstairs to the dorm room with the loud music playing at zomg o'clock and shout "Geez, /some/ of us are trying to STUDY and/or SLEEP, fercryinoutloud!". This didn't exactly make me the most popular guy on campus, but like Malvolio I had this very strong sense of... propriety, and I took it personally when I thought people around me were acting improperly. To be honest, I don't think I've mellowed since then so much as surrounded myself with more compatible people (college friends who are reading this excepted, of course) ;).
So anyway, the approach we're taking is to try to portray Malvolio as that guy; less a comic buffoon, and more someone who has strict but not wholly unreasonable notions of what Right Living is, and little tolerance for people who don't. He hopes that enduring the mockery of his peers will result in him being recognized and rewarded, because in a just world Right Living is recognized and rewarded, but this is ultimately used against him and brings him low.
There's still plenty of room to make Malvolio funny, but I'm looking forward to seeing how human we can make him, too.
