Twelfth Night

February 2018

Twelfth Night: As Imagined by the Old Trout Puppet Workshop

Twelfth Night. By William Shakespeare. Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Feb. 2018. Max Bell Theatre. Calgary. 

The brilliance of Shakespeare’s writing and his inherent understanding of universal human nature has kept his plays relevant for hundreds of years, but how do we take his works and interpret them for modern audiences? “Old Trout Puppet Theatre’s” Twelfth Night was a delightful combination of Shakespearean text and modern sensibility. This story of twins lost at sea was clearly and delightfully told through the mixing of live actors with puppet like sets and clever puppet-inspired staging techniques. 

This performance was full of charming moments, when the creative stagecraft was revealed to the sheer delight of the audience. The set and puppet design presented a visual feast and helped the make the Shakespearean text more approachable. The puppet’s also made this comedy funnier just by the nature of being puppets. The staging messed with proportion and asked human logic to take a step back, forsaking realism and asking the audience to fully accept what the puppets represented. 

Initially I was challenged by this clever and almost irreverent telling of a classic comedy. The puppets, with their very unique staging did seem to push the Shakespearean text to the background. Even though it was very well presented by the actors. But I remembered that in Shakespeare’s time this comedy likely was irreverent, intended to make audiences laugh with some innuendo and silly jokes that the modern viewer will not understand. This performance reminded me that Shakespeare may not have taken himself so seriously when he wrote Twelfth Night. And perhaps for us to enjoy his work as it was intended, we should be willing to have fun with it, and use modern creativity to give the story new life.