Review: Twelfth Night

Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night can be staged as a giddy romp (involving misplaced love and mistaken identity), or as calamity-barely-averted (if you play it dark) or anything between. Different characters can dominate, too. Sometimes, for example, party animal Toby Belch becomes the inebriated, anarchic center-of-gravity.

In this Sacramento Theatre Company production, it’s savvy women who stand tall. Alicia Hunt is charismatic as enterprising Viola, disguising herself as the beardless 20-something Cesario, and inadvertently catching the eye of wealthy and bored Olivia (the marvelous Melinda Parrett), who promptly puts the moves on the younger “man.” When Hunt and Parrett work together onstage, this show hums. It’s a convincing change of pace for both: Hunt excelled as a stressed-out drone pilot in the B Street Theatre’s Grounded last year; Parrett was an icy, commanding figure in Capital Stage’s The Homecoming. (Two other versatile actors from Homecoming, Ryan Snyder and Chris Vettel, are in Twelfth Night, too.)

Directors Kirk Blackinton and Brian Harrower favor a sunny, upbeat interpretation. The drunkenness of Toby Belch (Don Hayden), oft tipsy before noon, has few repercussions. Newcomer Taylor Vaughan makes an appealing debut as Olivia’s clever serving woman Maria. The play’s set in a British Caribbean colony, hence Noah Lee Hayes as a barefoot black Feste, singing calypso.