Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) (revisited)

This year marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, a collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays. There are many plays that can only be found in the Folio, and so it cannot be overstated how important it was that those involved decided upon its creation.

It was published seven years after the Bard’s death, and to commemorate that anniversary, in 2016 the Folger Library (holder of the world’s largest collection of the First Folio) sent copies of the Folio to all fifty states for display. To this end they held a competition to see who would get to host the book.

Great Lakes Theater, the company I work for, partnered with the Cleveland Public Library and several other organizations to create the winning proposal: The First Folio was coming to Cleveland! It didn’t hurt that the book would be in residence during the Republican National Convention, ensuring even more visitors.

One of the events proposed was a forty-five minute adaptation of a Shakespeare title, which would tour area libraries. The last time the city held a political convention was in 1936 (two of them, in fact) the same year Cleveland held the Great Lakes Exposition, and it was there that you could view a 30-60 minute adaptation of a variety of Shakespeare’s plays, every hour, on the hour at a scaled-down reproduction of the Globe Theatre. Surely, I could also write such a brief adaptation.

Photo: Carolyn York

However, it had to be portable, and I would be limited in the number of actors we could employ. I do work best with strict parameters. The task I set for myself was to cut an entire play down to only four characters. Not just four actors, playing a number of roles, but only four characters. I wanted our audiences, many of whom might be seeing Shakespeare for the first time, to be able to focus on a simple, streamlined story.

The result was Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio). I had the title before I’d written the adaptation. Is it told by Malvolio? Not really. Does it matter? I say that it does not. But we needed to put that proposal together, and I wanted to make it clear this was not going to be a strict interpretation of Twelfth Night.

Recently I have been digitizing a lot of materials at the office; prompt books for outreach tours, going back decades, and that included this one. I hadn't read it in the past seven years, and I really like it.

Part of my affection for the script is my memory of the performers, Chelsea, Chennelle, Luke and Shaun, all actor-teachers at that time, and some of the loveliest people in the world.

But I also really love what I did with the text. I made the story as a 1980s teen romantic comedy. Imagining them as high school students made it easier to streamline the Olivia-Orsino-Viola bizarre love triangle (get it?). 

Photo: Carolyn York

Taking place over the course of a single day in high school, Orsino and Viola (presenting as a boy named Cesario) were given lines from Toby Belch and Feste, making their friendship even more playful as they prank this hipster version of Malvolio.

I only changed one or two of Shakespeare’s words. Orsino says “Awesome!” more than once, and Olivia calls Cesario boyfriend, not husband (Sebastian does not appear.) Let’s say I was reshuffling Shakespeare, not only editing this play, but borrowing from other sources.

We expanded upon Olivia’s grief at the recent death of her brother as well as Viola’s plans to pass as a man using text from As You Like It, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Measure For Measure, Richard III, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Venus & Adonis. I found it all very satisfying.

The reason I shelved it and forgot it, however, was that I never thought of this as my play. I didn’t post it to New Play Exchange, or feature it on my website. Upon review, I have changed my mind about this. It is an adaptation, and it is mine. It would make a great one-act for a small cast, especially for high school aged students.

"Twelfth Night (As Told To Malvolio)" is available at New Play Exchange, or contact me directly.