Althouse: "Doesn’t Shakespeare begin 'Twelfth Night'... with the infatuated Duke Orsino uttering the famous line, 'If music be the food of love, play on'?"

August 22, 2025

"Doesn’t Shakespeare begin 'Twelfth Night'... with the infatuated Duke Orsino uttering the famous line, 'If music be the food of love, play on'?"

"Saheem Ali’s production hasn’t cut it, but merely decided that Orsino can wait. By flipping the first two scenes, and giving Viola the play’s final line, Ali has recentered a character who has been known to get lost in the overstuffedness of this comedy. And by having her speak initially in Swahili — 'Je, hii ni nchi gani, bwana?,' or 'What country is this, sir?,' she asks the captain — Ali establishes her firmly as a person arriving, in unaccustomedly desperate straits, on the shore of a foreign land, Illyria. Sounds political, doesn’t it...."

From "'Twelfth Night' Review: Lupita Nyong’o in Illyria/The actress is luminous, alongside her look-alike brother Junior Nyong’o, Sandra Oh and Peter Dinklage, in Shakespeare’s comedy at the newly revived Delacorte Theater" (NYT).

18 comments:

WhoKnew said...: By flipping the first two scenes and giving the last line to someone else he's not just recentering a character who is 'sometimes overlooked', He's rewriting the damn play. If I went to see Shakespeare and these kind of shenanigans were part of the without notice, I'd be pissed. If I pay to see Shakespeare, I want to see Shakespeare, not the directors revised version. ...And you kids get off my lawn!; 8/22/25, 9:14 AM
JAORE said...: Well thank goodness someone FINALLY has begun correcting the lousy writing of... who...WTF?; 8/22/25, 9:17 AM
Lazarus said...: Sandra Oh and Peter Dinklage as twins would certainly be innovative casting.

Would it really be more shocking than Peter Dinklage, Lena Heady and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau being siblings?

I'll hold off until "Orsino Can Wait" with Kevin James and Leah Remini though.; 8/22/25, 9:48 AM
Josephbleau said...: "Doesn’t Shakespeare begin 'Twelfth Night'... with the infatuated Duke Orsino uttering the famous line, 'If music be the food of love, play on'?"

This line is a crowd pleaser, you need to get the audience in the right place fast. “Music, being the facilitator of sex, must be supplied.”

Never underestimate the ability of some dipshit director to f things up. If ego is the food of theater, plod on.; 8/22/25, 9:49 AM
Narr said...: Sounds retarded.; 8/22/25, 9:57 AM
n.n said...: E pluribus duplicis; 8/22/25, 10:10 AM
CJinPA said...: Topics I'm not confident weighing in on:
Economic Policy
Health Care Policy
Shakespeare

I'll sit back and watch the feedback.; 8/22/25, 10:17 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I support rewriting Shakespeare if you go all out like Tom Stoppard in Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.; 8/22/25, 10:20 AM
JAORE said...: "I support rewriting Shakespeare if you go all out like Tom Stoppard in Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."

Nor do I. This is more like a parody using the framework of Shakespear. The topic play... not so much.; 8/22/25, 10:29 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Nothing wrong with flipping scenes and cutting lines, as long as you make that clear.

Twelfth night by Saheem Ali with additional dialoge by William Shakespeare.; 8/22/25, 10:56 AM
Two-eyed Jack said...: I support whatever works.
Me and Orson Welles is a good movie about putting on a show, taking ideas and running with them (Julius Caesar in that case).; 8/22/25, 11:06 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: It seems to be "shakespeare in the park" and is free with seats available for "Members".; 8/22/25, 11:07 AM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: Ah, it's Macbeth in motorcycle leathers again. How original these up-to-date versions are.

Stoppard is my favorite, and when he rewrote he did go full out, so that it was a distinguishable, separate work, not a skinsuit production.; 8/22/25, 11:14 AM
MB said...: And by having her speak initially in Swahili — 'Je, hii ni nchi gani, bwana?,' or 'What country is this, sir?,' she asks the captain — Ali establishes her firmly as a person arriving, in unaccustomedly desperate straits

Desperate straits because she speaks Swahili? I'm not sure why that's a given. I might assume she's the communications officer of a starship.; 8/22/25, 11:41 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Stoppard rewrites Shakespeare with R&G, but W.S. Gilbert did it first with " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern". Wikipedia quotes a 1904 reviewer:

"There is more brilliance of merely verbal wit in this little play than in anything else of Mr. Gilbert's. ... The temptation to dwell on the things that raise a laugh at every line is strong but there is a great deal more in the play than mere amusement. It is really a very subtle piece of criticism, sometimes of Shakespeare's play, sometimes of the commentators, sometimes of the actors who have played the great part."; 8/22/25, 11:51 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: “ I support rewriting Shakespeare if you go all out like Tom Stoppard in Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”

That’s fine, just don’t call it Hamlet. I saw a production of Romeo and Juliet at APT a couple of years ago where they’d gone full-tilt DEI…half the characters were Black, and half were deaf (Deaf?) and did their lines in sign language. A deaf Romeo made the balcony scene (where he’s supposed to overhear Juliet talking to herself) ridiculous. And they moved Juliet’s death to the first scene! It was sort of interesting, but it wasn’t Romeo and Juliet.; 8/22/25, 12:04 PM
Big Mike said...: @MB, Lupita Nyong'o is a black Kenyan (though born in Mexico City, where her father was teaching). She probably speaks Swahili every bit as well as she speaks English, and one would expect a stranded black shipwreck survivor to speak Swahili.

She is the personification of the Biblical verse “For I am black and beautiful.”; 8/22/25, 12:06 PM
tcrosse said...: This kind of jiggery-pokery happens all the time in opera these days. Color-blind casting has been around for decades, and has given us some marvelous artists. Time-shifting is commonplace, even with modern-dress stagings of Nabucco, which deals with the Hebrews enslaved in Babylon.; 8/22/25, 12:20 PM