Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair

Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Toil and Trouble Burlesque at The Three Clubs
Through August 26

RECOMMENDED

You may come out of Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair feeling as if your head has been caught in a blender.

But it’s a good dizziness, the kind you get after exiting the highest velocity attraction at an amusement park. You may not know exactly what you have just seen, but you know you’ve had a wild ride.

Judging from its present production, an extremely loosey-goosey musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at The Three Clubs in Hollywood, Toil and Trouble Burlesque is one of the more unusual theatrical companies you are likely to see on the local theater scene — and that’s putting it mildly.

If this present production is no exception, Toil and Trouble’s stock in trade is assembling a cast of talented and daring actors who are willing to bare all — well, practically all — in the service of Shakespeare. (In its seven years of existence, the company has also produced a couple of original plays.)

The evening opens with seasoned performer Amaya Absynthe doing a sinuous burlesque turn as an appreciative audience hoots its approbation.

The remainder of the cast is less seasoned when it comes to stripping and strutting. However, the actors all have amazing voices, and under the co-direction of Angie Hobin and James Ferrero, augmented by Ferrero and Jim Niedzialkowski’s excellent sound, all have their opportunities to individually shine. All are fearless when it comes to the slapstick requirements of this burlesque, mugging and gesticulating without constraint. And whatever their shapes or sizes, all are also fearless when it comes to divesting themselves of Jessica Jones’ colorful, fetish-inspired costumes. In fact, this show could be labeled a must-see tutorial in body positivity — an unexpectedly inspiring byproduct of the generalized raunchiness.

This wildly over-the-top adaptation takes Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy and bends it into pretzel permutations. Plenty of same-sex osculation — occasionally mirrored by Jayne Hobin’s crucial large-screen video designs — gives us an indication of where the action is headed. At play’s end, Duke Orsino’s (Walt Gray) palpable disappointment upon learning that his young courtier Cesario (Kim Dalton) is actually the female Viola in disguise, puts the perfect punctuation point on this untrammeled entertainment, which reinvents the Bard for a new audience yet keeps true to his bawdy comical traditions.

Toil and Trouble Burlesque at The Three Clubs, 1123 Vine St., Hollywood. Sat., 8 p.m.: thru Aug. 26. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/twelfth-night-tickets-648521604577 Running time: two hours and 30 minutes, with one 30 minute intermission.