Illyria, a musical rendition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, was musically very modernized, with songs that would be appropriate in any Broadway play. Fortunately however, Peter Mills, the writer, and the cast managed to retain a good portion of Shakespearean wit, despite the absence of most actual Shakespeare lines. For example, they had one character, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, played by Ryan Dietz, who kept mixing up words (describing himself as “the most illegible bachelor in Illyria”, a motif present in many of Shakespeare’s plays.

The Hudson Guild Theatre, which was small, gave the room an intimate feeling, as the stage was nearly on the same level as the audience. The set, which was a large staircase that came down on both sides, set the tone for the actors, who popped in and out with use of the stairs, sometimes gracefully and sometimes clumsily. The instrumental accompaniment, made up of piano, two reeds, a violin, a cello, a bass, and percussion, was located behind the stairs, and partially obscured to everyone in the audience. Strangely, the musicians of the little orchestra did not face the actors, but had their heads turned to stage left. The conductor must have been looking at the actors, but it was a very disconcerting effect, making the orchestra seem oddly disconnected from the whole scene. As accompaniment, they played excellently; their sound was very smooth, almost sounding recorded. But because they turned their backs on the actors, and the most visible player was a morose looking cellist, they had a passionless air.

The songs were catchy and pleasing, as befits a musical, and many of them were highly reminiscent of Disney songs (in their emotional aspect, and sometimes melodically as well). The actors were all very dynamic, enthusiastically threw themselves into their roles, and sung well. Not everyone who acts well is also good at singing, but the actors were able to perform above the musical level demanded of them.

Two actors stood out in particular. One was Jimmy Ray Bennett, who played a hoity-toity servant, Malvolio. His ability to sing and do very flexible things with ribbon adorned legs was truly remarkable. But his capacity for displaying multiple talents at a time was outmatched only by Jed Q Peterson’s role as Feste, the Fool in Twelfth Night. As a jester, he spoke and sung brilliantly while dancing, juggling, or pulling multitudes of scarves from his pockets. Peterson shone in particular when need for multitasking came up. One most appealing moment was when he had a conversation with Malvolio in which he pretends to be himself, the neighborhood priest, and a doctor of psychiatry. He was able to spout random Latin words, “Kyrie kyrie alma mater”, one moment, and hop onto another stair step and babble idiotic medical speech the next. He leapt from step to step, able to say “Malvolio!” repeatedly in different voices without any faltering and was also was greatly impressive, as he sang a little patter song, whose quality was of Gilbert and Sullivan status.

This interpretation of Twelfth Night was unusual in that it did not search for a creative or clever time period to place the play in. Instead, the director, Melissa Huber, chose to keep her play free of precise political allusions or a constraining time period. While the characters’ costumes all looked appropriate, it took a while to consider how chronologically specific they were. Only when someone made an allusion to Benjamin Franklin did the viewer wonder if the reference was anachronistic or not. This lack of historical constriction made the plot itself stand out very much, and showed that the cleverness of Shakespeare is timeless.