TWELFTH NIGHT

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Identity confusion—what could be more contemporary and, at the same time, more Shakespearean? Almost all the characters in Twelfth Night assume a different identity, leading to confusion, misunderstandings, and even love. Each character deceives and is deceived in turn.

Viola and her twin brother, Sebastian, are victims of a shipwreck, each believing the other has drowned. Upon reaching the shores of Illyria, Viola disguises herself as a man and, under the name Cesario, becomes a servant to Duke Orsino.

Orsino is in love with Olivia, but she is mourning her brother's death and has rejected all of his previous romantic advances. Cesario (Viola) is sent by the duke to deliver his message of love to Olivia, and Olivia falls in love with the handsome messenger, deceived by Viola’s disguise.

Viola, however, has fallen in love with her master, Orsino, who, in turn, is confused by the strange feelings he has for his "servant." Thus, a love triangle forms in which Viola loves Orsino, who loves Olivia, who loves Cesario/Viola. But how much of these romantic entanglements is truly love, and how much is illusion?

Malvolio, Olivia's steward, holds a disdainful attitude toward everyone around his mistress—her drunken relative Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew, the servant Maria, and the fool Feste. They all join forces against Malvolio and play a cruel prank on him.

Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, appears, along with Antonio, his rescuer and protector. Sebastian meets Olivia, who mistakes him for Cesario and proposes to him. Sebastian accepts and, inevitably, comes face to face with his twin—Cesario, who turns out to be his sister, Viola, whom he thought had drowned in the shipwreck.

In a provisional happy ending, the identity confusions are cleared, and the love triangle resolves into two couples: Sebastian and Olivia, Viola and Orsino.

However, the ending takes a different turn, as Malvolio seeks revenge on those who mocked him.

Cast

• ORSINO: Andrei Bibire
• VIOLA: Cristiana Luca
• SEBASTIAN: Theodor Șoptelea ,Vlad Lință
• ANTONIO: Iulian Enache
• OLIVIA: Mihaela Velicu
• SIR TOBY BELCH: Liviu Manolache
• MARIA: Ecaterina Lupu
• SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK: Cătălin Bucur
• MALVOLIO: Marian Adochiţei ,Emilian Oprea
• FESTE: Ștefan Mihai
• CURIO/ O FEMEIE LA CURTEA OLIVIEI: Alina Manţu
• VALENTIN/ UN POLIȚIST: Georgiana Mazilescu
• CAPTAIN / PRIEST: Florentin Roman

Tours

• FESTIVALUL INTERNAȚIONAL DE TEATRU „ELVIRA GODEANU” - 13 - 24 mai 2024
• Festivalul International Shakespeare Craiova - 16 - 26 mai 2024

Reviews

On the twelfth night after Christmas, when Epiphany is celebrated, social norms are suspended. It's a night of playful yet tragic revelation, walking the tightrope between illusion and reality. A macabre dance, which theater ritually recreates as a necessary reminder. No play could be more fitting for the expressive, talented, and passionate ensemble of actors at the Constanța State Theater. I dedicate the following lines to these actors, whose hearts are hungrier than the sea. I'm sure Andrei Șerban, the mastermind behind yet another exceptional and hypnotic performance, will understand. Andrei Bibire’s Orsino opens the curtain and immediately captivates the audience with a precise, rigorously choreographed performance that remains fluid. The actor strikes the perfect balance in portraying a masculine figure that today’s terminology would likely describe as toxic. He carefully and subtly builds a character who merely replicates – in thought and attitude – the simplistic, almost endearing clichés of “man’s thinking.” He’s like Ken from the Barbie movie. I dare say that, like Ryan Gosling, Bibire plays his character so convincingly while keeping a barely perceptible but essential distance from him. [...] Cristiana Luca’s Viola is simply a revelation, from beginning to end. With a rare natural grace combined with a keen sense of stage intuition, she plays and plays with herself at the same time, delighting and delighting us in the multiple reflections of the character she portrays. Cristiana Luca's candid expressiveness is paired with well-measured humor. Her innocence is authentic, and her ability to convey a latent power—never overt—gives her portrayal of Viola great tension, yet a pure transparency that is truly extraordinary. [...] Mihaela Velicu’s Olivia reveals a talent with presence, the ability to switch from angelic to neurotic with effortless ease. An actress whose intelligence radiates, blending sensitivity and reason, with a warm and cold expressiveness, shifting from moment to moment. Her Olivia is comedic and full of poise, passionate and lost, balancing the sweet delusion of the illusion of love with the clichés prefigured by Orsino. [...] Ecaterina Lupu (Maria) is an actress plucked from Bulgakov’s world—diabolic and effervescent, dictating the pulse of energy on stage like a playful yet perverse little god. She inspired me with the sense, in the triangle—just as Bulgakovian—of the characters Feste and Sir Toby, that, yes, the world may be led by three mad spirits, and maybe that’s why "the farce goes too far..." [...] Cătălin Bucur plays Sir Andrew, an actor whose comic talent is organic and devastating. A true fool who could also portray characters like Richard III and star in Ionesco or Samuel Beckett plays. His Sir Andrew is, in fact, tragic in reality, destined to embody the village idiot, the one whom fate constantly tramples, destined for ridicule. The actor has the rare ability to make you laugh just by appearing on stage, with a posture, an arched brow, an asymmetrical, ridiculous gesture. [...] The comic of Ștefan Mihai’s (Feste) character is much more dry and sadistic. The actor gives the impression of someone who delights in using the tools he knows so well, fully aware of their effect. This playing with possible mannerisms is risky but assumed, and it foreshadows a versatile and lucid stage personality, one that, in some sense, views its vocation without idealism. “We’re all just poor acrobats,” the actor seems to say, not the character. And that gives his stage presence a peculiar relaxation, a distant and nostalgic tone. [...] Finally, I turn to the actors playing Malvolio alternately. Marian Adochiței plays his character as a guaranteed victim of ridicule. Grim, taciturn, monosyllabic. A stage presence with minimalist yet effective comic tools, a role perfectly integrated into the ensemble. Emilian Oprea gives Malvolio a different comic consistency, dressing him in grotesque histrionics. Oprea is not an unknown actor; on the contrary. Every time I see him in a role, I am impressed by his ability to radiate a translucent, magnetic ambiguity, both on stage and screen—I know that words, too, pathetically translate what an actor conveys without speaking. [...] The two actors playing Sebastian, Theodor Șoptelea and Vlad Lință, don't have roles with much room for expressive freedom, but each uses his stage presence well. Șoptelea is discreet and cold, the rational mirror of Viola. Lință is sentimental, with his emotions on display, the sensitive mirror of Viola. [...] The actor playing Sir Toby is no newcomer. Liviu Manolache creates a colorful and well-articulated composition in the comic mosaic of the grotesque-malefic triangle. Similarly, Iulian Enache’s Antonio convincingly portrays a hopeless lover, with irrational impulses justified by the crisis of middle age. In his brief appearances as Captain and Priest, Florentin Roman appropriately interprets his role as a link in the story. Alina Manțu and Georgiana Mazilescu choreographically mediate the beginning of the play, dancing hieratically and hypnotically on stage as the audience enters. They later become various supporting characters (Curio, Valentin, Policeman) and skillfully connect the scenes without ever seeming intrusive. There’s a lot of precision in this! The last magnificent actor in this performance is the set designed by Carmencita Brojboiu, perfectly accompanied by Alexandru Popa’s sound design and the lighting by Cristian Niculescu. The scenography is conceived as a huge box in which the game of illusions unfolds, with projections reflected by a curtain of fringes with rainbow-like hues. It seems like a digital game in vivid, too-vivid colors, with characters who disguise their existence and live it as a farce full of clichés, although death—the true disappearance—always looms very close. It’s only a curtain’s width away… Allusions abound: fluidity of genders, aggression, and absurd comedy, pomposity and promiscuity, macabre cheerfulness, and senseless cruelty. Andrei Șerban, along with his associate director Dana Dima, succeeds in this performance in making you want to be on stage yourself, to be immersed in the beauty of life’s absurdity, the projections we willingly throw ourselves into, the humiliation and rejection we show others at the very moment we seek belonging and acceptance... [...]

Corina Șuteu - Revista 22

https://revista22.ro/cultura/sunt-mai-flamand-decat-e-marea-sau-actorii-din-a-douasprezecea-noapte

I’m not sure if, when Andrei Șerban decided to revisit the text of Twelfth Night, he intended to blow the world apart, but the reading he offers of one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays is more than surprising. It’s alive, it’s shocking, it’s wild—a perspective that, at least in the final moments of the performance, makes you freeze in your seat and look at the world around you with new eyes. We are part of a crazy game, existence itself is a show, the whole world is a show with countless, infinite masks, and at some point, everything explodes. We are shadows of death, and in every smile hides a tragedy, in every being hides another being, and this endless chain of masks behind which we hide is the dough of an existence whose meaning slips away from us. At the Constanța State Theater—a theater that’s had a new life in recent years, with an excellent troupe, many young and talented artists, and a theater where Andrei Șerban said he rediscovered the extraordinary spirit and energy from decades ago at the Piatra Neamț Theater, where he began his career—Andrei Șerban, along with Dana Dima, chooses to stage this strange play by Shakespeare with two such different levels and a perspective that’s surprisingly modern, shockingly relevant, not only on sexual identity but also on femininity and feminine thinking, illuminated in a way that is at least strange for the era in which it was created. Andrei Șerban’s Illyria is a stage. A cabaret stage. A stage with echoes of Twin Peaks. A stage where a clown could come and perform his act one evening... The set designed by Carmencita Brojboiu is bathed in infinite colors, and the lighting changes the meaning of the story, alters the meaning of the lines, and shifts the key in which a scene or character is conceived. And the ending... the ending that haunts you, for hours, days, weeks, settles like a lump in your throat over the entire joy of a wedding in which almost no one is happy. [...]

Monica Andronescu - artitudini

https://artitudini.ro/iliria-lui-andrei-serban-arunca-lumea-in-aer/

If it’s a Shakespearean comedy, then let’s play! Let’s play at the game critics used to play, finding at least three levels of interpretation in the Bard’s Sonnets and plays: first, the denotative level. Then, two other contrasting ones, drawn from the polysemy of the English language. One would involve licentious language, meant to make the reading “juicy”; and finally, another level for those seeking refined pleasures, indulging in intellectual or metaphysical messages. The same phrase could point in all three directions. [...] But Twelfth Night remains a comedy with all the classic elements from Plautus and Terence: mistaken identities, shipwrecked twins leading to ever more absurd situations, and then, the long-awaited revelation that brings about a happy ending. And Andrei Șerban knows how to do comedies. And, more importantly, he knows how to make them appeal to today’s audience, using the quirks of our time. Who is who? Identities slip from one to another, gender—an outdated label—proves to be more fluid than ever in each scene, and erotic pleasure is recreated in all possible combinations once the male/female opposition has been erased. Love or attraction dissolve genders. The shipwrecked woman disguises herself as a eunuch. A kiss between the savior Antonio (Iulian Enache) and the saved Sebastian, along with the hungry gaze the former casts on the young man, Countess Olivia falling for a woman she believes to be a man, the affection between the two girls, also culminating in a kiss... all of this happens under the vast umbrella of mistaken identities. What better line than "You are she. I am he"? Shakespeare proves, as always, to be “our contemporary.” And the heritage director proves once again to be receptive to the trends of the day. What makes this show, divided into short scenes, a true pleasure is its manic pace, quicker than champagne foam. How else, if it’s all about pleasure? [...] Just like the author he’s staging, Andrei Șerban creates a Twelfth Night for all types of audiences, with their various levels of interpretation. And so, the aura of universality descends once again on the performance. Only this time, it’s torn from the mindset, expectations, and eclectic habits of our days.

Cristina Rusiecki - B-Critic

https://www.b-critic.ro/spectacol/teatru/lumea-se-rastoarna-doar-pentru-o-vreme/

Andrei Șerban has created a very fresh, energetic, and humorous production of Twelfth Night at the Constanța State Theater (premiere on February 28-29, 2024), which is both very feminist and politically irreverent. This fast-paced, at times frenetic, staging is excellently supported by the Constanța ensemble, justifying the wordplay in the title. The first strength of the directorial approach is how it cleverly clarifies the otherwise branching plot of the play. The story of the twins Viola and Sebastian, separated by a shipwreck and later reunited after many trials, becomes clearer in Andrei Șerban’s interpretation (with Daniela Dima as associate director). In fact, the directors have made some inspired and necessary dramaturgical adjustments, I believe, trimming unnecessary parts of the plot and introducing, subtly, small lines and character traits that bring the story closer to contemporary times, with a clearly recognizable polemical subtext. The action takes place in a minimalist, stylized set (an admirable design by Carmencita Brojboiu), featuring a winding catwalk interrupted by depressions that can represent different spaces of action, bordered by a silver curtain in which the highly colorful lighting design by Cristian Niculescu reverberates spectacularly. Alongside the fanciful and ingenious details in the costumes (also by Carmencita Brojboiu)—the Elizabethan collars are iconic scenic signs—and the quirky plant pots, the overall set design achieves a remarkable sense of suggestion. Andrei Șerban has constructed his production—precisely due to this spatial and textual reduction, so to speak—on the actors, on the “personality of the characters,” and he has expertly exploited to the fullest the talents of the Constanța actors from all generations. [...] I must point out very clearly that the directorial ideological commentary is still very balanced: it’s true that some of the male characters are generally portrayed as weak, superficial, and lacking in virility, while the female characters are brilliant, willful, victorious, admirable, and capable of manipulating the plot. However, this doesn’t overturn the significant relationships of the action: the love story and the obstacles to its fulfillment remain the red thread that can always be followed. What also stood out to me, as an atypical element in Shakespearean productions, is that—along with the excellent highlighting of the actors—Andrei Șerban has created a show with a certain lubricious tone (I stand by the strength of the term), meaning it’s erotic and very Shakespearean in this way. And yet, this tone, which may be jarring for prudes, doesn’t exclude a warm, sensitive, almost poetic dimension to the love story, one that is occasionally deeply moving. [...]

Claudiu Groza - Revista Tribuna

https://revistatribuna.ro/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/518net.pdf

Only fools love. While bravely digging in the sea with almost bare hands, searching for carefully crafted words from Shakespeare’s boldest text. Thrown into the waves along with the twins Sebastian and Viola four centuries ago, only to delight in the shipwreck that has accompanied their comedic journey across small and large stages in every corner of the world, now brought back to land, well-dried and saved again to assume a new identity, in a new language from a new Illyria, theatrically raised in the youthful city of love on the Black Sea coast: the Constanța State Theater. [...] Staged by Andrei Șerban in the early post-revolution years at the Bucharest National Theater (with Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan, Gheorghe Dinică, Maia Morgenstern, Claudiu Bleonț, and others), under the title *Twelfth Night or What You Will*, the famous Shakespearean play (with its subtitle so open to interpretation) enjoys, more than three decades later, in the fresh production at Constanța, the vitality of an excellent ensemble of mostly very young actors, who relish and skillfully thread four centuries of musicality from Shakespeare’s phrases into their tender beings, full of playfulness and color, entirely untainted by the dust that has settled over any classical convention. With ease, they transform words (an excellent translation that updates while preserving the preciousness of the language, achieved through long sentences and changes in word order, rendered in a colloquial style) into swords that cross skillfully in the duels of love to which the gauntlet has been thrown. [...]

Luciana Antofi

https://lucianantofi.wordpress.com/2024/03/04/postnaufragiu-cu-joker-in-piscina-disco-din-iliria-nebunilor-a-douasprezecea-noapte-la-malul-marii-neomadrigal-elisabetan-cu-andrei-serban/