Poor outdated Malvolio. Amid the comedian romance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Evening,” he’s the imperious steward who will get cruelly pranked for sport, duped by a band of good alecks who forge a love letter seemingly addressed to him.
Believing that the missive is from the countess he adores, and considering he’s following her needs, he clothes garishly in yellow stockings with cross-garters and behaves as if he’s come unhinged. Then he’s locked away in darkness, the place his tormentors proceed to mess along with his thoughts.
It’s a rancid sort of meanness, however the playwright Betty Shamieh has turned it right into a hero’s origin story along with her intelligent, winking new play “Malvolio.” And the Classical Theater of Harlem, whose “Twelfth Evening” final July was an effervescent delight, has normal this sequel right into a candy summer time frolic, with the sympathetic Allen Gilmore reprising what’s now the title function.
Twenty years after the top of “Twelfth Evening,” Malvolio is lengthy gone from the island of Illyria. A revered navy basic in a cussed battle, he’s the chief of the Legion of the Cross-Gartered. (Fabulous identify, that; enjoyable uniforms, too, by Celeste Jennings.) However his previous mistreatment festers in him.
“My humiliation made me reckless,” he says. “Reckless males make nice troopers.”
In Ian Belknap and Ty Jones’s fleet-footed manufacturing on the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, a lot of the outdated gang from “Twelfth Evening” remains to be again on Illyria, residing not so fortunately ever after. The wedding of Viola (Perri Gaffney) and Orsino (René Thornton Jr.) totters on regardless of his infidelity — and his choice for seeing her disguised as a boy, as she was when he fell in love along with her.
It’s Volina (Kineta Kunutu), their strong-minded daughter, who takes up the mantle of romance and journey. Betrothed towards her needs to Prince Furtado (J.D. Mollison) — a misogynistic nitwit and sole inheritor to the uber-bored King Chadlio (John-Andrew Morrison, so humorous that you’ll root for the king to outlive numerous makes an attempt on his life) — Volina slips out of Illyria and meets Malvolio by likelihood. She falls immediately, persuasively in love with him.
Vital of battle, skeptical of marriage and astute in regards to the warping impact of defining oneself via trauma, “Malvolio” regards its characters from a distinctly feminine perspective. Paying shut consideration to the ladies, Shamieh has enjoyable with callbacks to assorted Shakespeare performs; Volina’s nurse (Marjorie Johnson) was as soon as Juliet’s.
With a shade palette that pops, and choreography (by Dell Howlett) that does, too, this can be a visually and aurally attractive manufacturing. (The set is by Christopher and Justin Swader, lighting by Alan C. Edwards, video by Zavier Augustus Lee Taylor and music by Frederick Kennedy.) If the characters’ tangled relationships are a bit advanced for the uninitiated, that’s additionally true in “Twelfth Evening.” The massive image right here is completely clear.
Does Malvolio have sufficient hope in his broken coronary heart to threat loving Volina again? Will she even be free to decide on him if he does? Effectively, it’s a comedy — with last-minute reveals which might be solely within the spirit of Shakespeare, and completely charming.
It’s free, by the best way. Deal with your self.
MalvolioThrough July 29 on the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Operating time: 1 hour half-hour.
