Twelfth Night

Sandra Oh, Lupita Nyong'o, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Peter Dinklage in a star-studded “Twelfth Night.” PBS photo screenshots

Ken Burns and company's “The American Revolution,” isn't the only historical treasure on PBS these days.

Great Performances' “Twelfth Night” is another one.

Saheem Ali filmed the rollicking comedy – its stellar cast led by Lupita Nyong'o and her brother, Junior Nyong'o, along with Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage and Jesse Colin Ferguson – in a free Public Theater performance in Central Park's Delacorte Theater last summer.

When Shakespeare wrote “Twelfth Night” in 1600, he added “What You Will” to the title. Probably just a coincidence that Will was his first name, too. Those words in big red letters provide the backdrop on the outdoor stage, which also makes ingenious use of trap doors.

If the Bard were writing the play today, a better subtitle might be “Chain of Fools.”

Rarely has such a collection of nutcases been assembled on one stage – or on TV and screens of all sizes via pbs.org. 

Not all the characters are clowns and buffoons by nature. Some are perfectly reasonable otherwise, but are acting erratically under the all-consuming narcotic of love. 

Either way, the effect is the same: hilarious.

Gender switches – always women disguising themselves as males – were a staple of Shakespeare's comedies because there were no such thing as actresses in Elizabethan theater. Boys, or good-looking guys with high voices, had to play those roles.

These translations always led to mistaken identities, another trademark of the Bard's raucous comedies.

In “Twelfth Night” the errors and confusion come in layers, piled on top of one another.

After a shipwreck that claimed her twin brother, Viola (a luminous Lupita Nyong'o) washes up on the shores of Illyria. For reasons probably better understood four hundred years ago, she disguises herself as a young man, takes the name Cesario, and joins the court of the buff, contantly-in-the gym Count Orsino (Khris Davis).

She/he quickly becomes the Count's favorite, and gets his top priority assignment. Namely, to go woo the fair Olivia (Sandra Oh). Unfortunately, haughty Olivia could care less … right up until she gets a look at Orsino's messenger. Va-va-voom, as the Bard might say.

So, we've got the makings of a triangle, where two of the three lovers don't have a clue about whom they're in love with.

Olivia's court in the meantime is a nesting ground for cuckoo birds. Malvolio (Peter Dinklage) is her pompous serving man with delusions far beyond his lowly station in life. Her uncle, Sir Toby Belch (John Ellison Conlee) is a dissipated old sot, who keeps his moronic crony Andrew Aguecheek (Jesse Colin Ferguson) around for amusement. Saucy wench Maria (Daphne Rubin-Vega) is Sir Toby's partner in mischief.

Just trying to sort out who's who, and what's what, and who's what is a comedy formula that's been working well for four centuries now. Shakespeare may be more popular, a vindication even, for folks who have wondered more than once just what we were thinking when we became lit majors. 

But, as Shakespeare Santa Cruz (now Santa Cruz Shakespeare) has been proving every summer, audiences don't need any training to start having Aha! moments as soon as they realize that, underneath the Elizabethan flourishes, they understand exactly what the actors are saying.

Shakespeare remains the undisputed heavyweight champ of the English language, after all. 

Using words to actually say something may be a lost art, but at a time when crimes against language may ultimately be the straw that breaks our society's back, it's a pleasure to remember how it works. Especially when it makes you laugh.

The fact that the Bard is considered High Culture is ironic since, in his comedies at least, he was providing raunchy entertainment for the lowbrow masses in his own time. All the screen stars in this production know their ways around close-ups, along with all the physical pratfalls and mugging for the live audience that run through the farce.

The physical resemblance of the Nyong'o siblings – enhanced by make-up artists and costumers – is uncanny, adding to the overall chaos of mistaken identities better than Shakespeare could have imagined when he first wrote the play.

It's not that love is blind, so much as it's blinding, often producing results as ridiculous as they are romantic. 

                     With Lupita Nyong'o at the 2014 Maui Film Festival. The Maui News/Matthew Thayer photo

For the reader(s) who appreciate the personal asides in these reviews (I'm talkin' to you, Barry Wurst), here are a couple more:

It was my honor, and pleasure, to interview Lupita Nyong'o when she received the Maui Film Festival's Rainmaker Awards in 2014. Fresh from her Oscar for “12 Years a Slave” (her movie debut), even at that early point in her career, it was clear that the Kenyan actress born in Mexico and trained at Yale, was a class act.

With “Twelfth Night” she adds tour-de-force physical comedy to an already awesome resume.

I also had a near encounter of the celebrity kind with Peter Dinklage. He must have just gotten off the plane and was in Costco looking at a surfboard.

It was in the “Station Master” and “Elf” stage of his career, before “Game of Thrones.” I did a double take when I saw him and stopped in my tracks. He looked up and noticed me, then gave me a big smile when it was clear I wasn't going to approach him or make a big deal of it.

When it comes to not making big deals, he's a master.

I'm not absolutely sure it was him. But Peter Dinklage is a hard guy to mistake for anyone else.