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Shakespeare Rocks
Sara Wysocki Tacoma Voice June 1997

Harlequin Productions is rocking the South Sound with their own twist on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. A Rock and Roll Twelfth Night-with apologies to William Shakespeare is a loud, raucous, funny and wildly original musical. Shakespeare would have loved it.

Or would he? The Bard was known to have quite a bit of an ego. To have someone change his text so dramatically and to add music to it, much less rock and roll icons-well, he might have had a bit of a problem with that.

From a theatrical point of view however, ol' William might indeed have appreciated the new life that brothers Bruce and Scot Whitney injected into his popular comedy. The show is a music lover's dream come true.

Some of the biggest names in music grace the stage for this production, including Elvis, Madonna, Rod Stewart, Buddy Holly and John Lennon. The music itself is a potpourri of major genres as well. There is a reggae number, some techno groove beats, classic rock, punk, several ballads, and even a bit of heavy metal. The live band costumed like the Beatles on their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club album is a snazzy touch.

From a strictly musical point of view, the show is right on target. The singing is rich and vibrant, and there isn't a weak song or voice in the entire performance. However, be warned, it is loud. The choreography is also sharp and wonderfully spotlighted in a montage number "Get Up and Dance." The actors fill out their characters (or caricatures, if you will) quite well. Jeff Kingsbury's timing is dead on as the dim witted Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Jesse Hinds manic energy and physical antics make him the perfect punk delinquent, the pirate Antonio.

Matt Lee certainly has the stage presence one would expect from the King of Rock and Roll and Linda Morris has plenty of sass as Olivia modeled after Madonna. Russell Holm brings new lows to the sniveling and gullible Malvolio.

The show is not for Shakespeare purists (if you haven't already figured that out by the title). A Rock & Roll Twelfth Night was born out of Shakespeare's classic and the stories are the same. So are the characters. The language, however, is not. Much modernization has been done, and not only with the addition of the songs. Certainly, much of the text was streamlined, if not altogether replaced by a catchy phrase or line.

It is a bit incongruous at times to have the characters speaking in iambic pentameter one second and then bursting into songs with titles like "I Hate This Stinkin' Place" the next. However, it's a risk Scot Whitney took when he conjured up a rock musical out of Shakespeare, and that risk paid off. I suspect that by giving William Shakespeare a guitar and microphone, the Whitney brothers have broadened the Bard's appeal considerably.