Welcome to Chillyria
Shakespeare's "What You Will" is splendidly set to a hip-hop beat at the Bristol Riverside Theatre.
What is that strange sound in Shakespeare's Illyria, the city of
Twelfth Night?
It's vaguely familiar. It's . . . it's . . . oh! It's the sound of text-messaging! And what about that hip-hop drumbeat? And those citizens in leather and mini-skirts? Or wearing Ts straight out of the mall?
What You Will, an urban - and urbane - reshaping of Twelfth Night, uses the Bard's alternative title in order to distinguish itself from the real play. But for sure, it is the real play, in a remarkable world premiere by Bristol Riverside Theatre that opened Thursday night.
Somewhere up there, the old man must be happily nodding in the direction of Bristol (Bucks County, not England). By my troth, he is saying, they got it. And they got it right. This body-talking, street-rocking, sophisticated production of his play is the bomb - and not in the usual theatrical sense of the word.
This story - of filial love between twins separated in a shipwreck and of the kissy-feely love that a rich countess flatly rejects from an adoring duke - is a hip-hop natural.
The play calls for music from the first line, when the duke describes it as "the food of love," and goes on to employ song in the text with Shakespeare's own lyrics. It has young lovers and lover-wannabes, people who put on airs with and without bling, folks delighting in substance abuse, a savvy fool who hustles cracks (but not crack), and the feel of a new generation trying to grow into a more secure adulthood. Illyria, dawg, is where it's at.
Bristol's artistic director, Keith Baker, and the celebrated choreographer Donald Byrd conceived the piece, then codirected it - and, in a bold demonstration of Shakespeare's malleability, set their hip-hop sensibility directly onto his script. All the slick movements by Byrd, the showy and schlumpy clothes by designer Linda Bee Stockton, the laptops, the cell phones, the characters who deliver their lines with the cadence and 'tude of hard-edged corner kids - all that is the property of Bristol's production. Every one of the words comes directly from the quill of the Bard.
(What You Will is one of two hip-hop recreations of classics on local stages; at Temple University through Feb. 22, The Seven is Will Power's take on Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes.)
"Give me my veil!" the countess Olivia (terrific tough-girl Miriam Hyman) barks to her servant, Maria. Maria (slick Valerie Issembert) does - in the form of sleek, expensive sunglasses. Olivia's snarky steward, Malvolio (Carl Wallnau, reprising - in a wholly different way - his star turn last summer at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival), delivers a sharp Elizabethan message after securing his scooter with a remote keylock.
It all makes sense, backed by Justin Ellington's music on recorded tracks, mesmerizing live violin work by Claudia Pellegrini, and fine portrayals of the duke (RJ Foster), the twins (Christin Sawyer Davis and Stephen Pilkington), Toby Belch (Abe Goldfarb), Antonio (Brian Richardson), Sir Andrew (John-Patrick Driscoll), and the others. As the story spins out on stage and on a walkway high above, over-the-top break dancer Gabriel Dionisio spins like a top - on his head, in a production that turns Shakespeare on his head, while always staying fully inside it.
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