Twelfth Night was the last happy comedy William Shakespeare wrote—though clearly the man’s mood had already started to darken. His primary source for the story was Barnabe Riche’s prose narrative “Of Apolonius and Silla” (1581), which has its roots, in turn, in a 1531 Italian play called Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones) and, further back, the mistaken-identity comedies of Plautus. Adapted and directed by Sean Graney, the Hypocrites’ 12 Nights is a conflation of the Italian play, Riche’s tale, and Shakespeare’s comedy, performed by only four cast members and lasting just 60 lively minutes.
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All three stories center on a young woman who disguises herself as a servant boy, falls madly in love with her employer, and is required to pitch woo on his behalf to another young woman, who falls madly in love with the cross-dresser. Gl’Ingannati plays up the farcical possibilities inherent in the premise, with zany predicaments, wily servants, and dick jokes. Riche adds romance and melodrama, throwing in a journey by sea to Constantinople, an illegitimate pregnancy, and several preachy asides to the reader.
Since, as Orsino points out in the famous first lines of the play, music is the food of love, there’s lots of music in Illyria—but it’s the kind that makes you sad. The songs of Feste the clown (replaced by Graney with 80s power ballads like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”) invariably remind the listener that beauty is fleeting, love is fickle, and, by the way, you’re not getting any younger.
Like Shylock, the “most notoriously abus’d” Malvolio usually wins the audience’s sympathy in spite of himself. But Graney throws his lot in with the party animals, giving Maria the last word with a speech excusing any mischief making by virtue of her life-loving exuberance.
Through 10/6: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 7:30 and 10 PM, Sun 3 PM, Mon 7:30 PM Chopin Theatre 1543 W. Division 773-525-5991the-hypocrites.com $28.
