Shakespeare by the Sea’s vaudeville twist on Twelfth Night is a fun and funny, passionate production steeped in Nova Scotia singer-songwriter Eliza Rhinelander’s original tunes as atmospheric as foggy coasts or smoke-filled, 1920s Paris bars.

Director Drew Douris-O’Hara’s remarkably clear and tight-knit adaptation of Shakespeare’s play about love and tomfoolery was inspired by his visit to the Moulin Rouge in Paris during his honeymoon. (His wife Jade Douris-O’Hara plays Olivia, the hard-hearted, grieving young woman whom the Duke Orsino craves.)

After a highly entertaining, foggy-night show Thursday, Douris-O’Hara said that he saw the stage in his imagination in Paris exactly as it has been realized outdoors on a hill in front of the crumbling fortifications at the Cambridge Battery in Point Pleasant Park.

The stage is a stage, framed by red curtains, with a stage door, a dressing table, wigs and an old-fashioned, stand-up microphone. This is home to the play’s star and unusual, innovative centre: the fool Feste.

Douris-O’Hara was inspired by the queer and trans pioneers of vaudeville’s heyday and, in particular, by SBTS returning favourite Zach Colangelo, a queer, transgender performer who is a powerful, incandescent presence and an excellent singer with a huge vocal range and delicate song-crafting in terms of emotion and articulation.

For a play that includes the famous line, “If music be the food of love, play on,” the choice to make a divaesque MC and music essential to the story is an inspired one. And the songs by Rhinelander, at 19 and at the beginning of her career, are amazing, from the beginning shipwreck storytelling sea shanty to bluesy heartbreak love songs. She worked with Shanoa Phillips as associate composer and musical director.

Dressed in flapper gowns, glitter and fishnet stockings this Feste is both the wise, teasing fool inside the play and a kind of chorus and magician, like Prospero in the Tempest. Luckily, an excellent cast rises up to Colangelo’s energy; everything is kept in balance.

Douris-O’Hara infuses Twelfth Night with youthful energy. The reprobates Toby Belch – Olivia’s hanger-on uncle – and Andrew Aguecheek, the hapless knight whom Toby promises will succeed in wooing his niece, are played more like downtown Halifax partiers than tiresome, dissolute old men in Shakespearean dress.

Matt Lacas, who was Robin Hood at Festival Antigonish, is superb as Toby – merry and rowdy and full of joie de vivre – and Patrick Jeffrey as Andrew Aguecheek is unusually funny. It’s very interesting to see him transform from the lovestruck, regal Duke Orsino into the foolish, none-too-bright Andrew with his mess of straw-like blond hair.

Another centre of this production is award-winning actor Amaka Umeh’s anchoring performance as Viola/Cesario. They bring a remarkable degree of naturalness, inflection, rhythm and emotion to this portrayal of a young woman grieving a lost brother, and dressed up as a man to fit into a foreign society. Viola becomes Orsino’s servant to deliver his love messages to Olivia. Of course, Viola falls in love with Orsino while Olivia falls in love with the person she thinks is Cesario – a typical but, in this case, very clear and lively Shakespearean case of mixed-up identity.

(In 2022 Umeh became the first Black actor to play Hamlet in the Stratford Festival’s history. You’ll understand why they are considered a rising Canadian star if you go see this play.)

However, this production is sweet because all the performances are high-quality: Raeesa Lalani’s playful and harsh Maria rounding out the trio of merry-makers who torment Olivia’s vain and Puritan steward, Malvolio; Chris George as Malvolio, in an excellent and very funny portrayal, full of wide eyes with a low, expressionless voice and the rigidity of an autocratic automaton; Daniel Nwobi in a small but fine portrayal as Viola’s brother Sebastian and Jade Douris O’Hara, bringing the same energy of youth and passion to Olivia as she did to Juliet last year (but without the teenage petulance).

This production has great pacing and attention to detail. The often-straightforward scene of Malvolio finding a fake letter, supposedly a love letter from Olivia, is jazzed up with a lot of movement all around the grassy stage. At one point Maria, Toby and Andrew pose as a fountain spitting out water from their mouths – a quick and fun sight-gag, over in less than a minute but so worthwhile.

(When the Atlantic Theatre Festival produced Twelfth Night it portrayed the torment of Malvolio in a dark way but this production keeps it quite light and comedic. The only time the play flew briefly out the window was when Feste visited Malvolio as Sir Topas in a stretch of loud and inaudible madness.)

The characters in Twelfth Night talk a lot about the elements and all the elements are working in this production including Téa Stewart’s imaginative, period-esque costumes in particular the matching newsboy costumes for Viola and Sebastian and Feste’s outfits. Choreography is by Jade Douris-O’Hara; production designer is Brenda Duran; Rachel Dawn Woods is stage manager.

At show end, on the foggy, darkening walk out to the parking lot, I overheard a young woman say to her friend, “Twelfth Night is my mother’s favourite play. I never understood why. Now I understand.”

Twelfth Night runs at 100 minutes with a 15-minute intermission at 7 p.m. through August alternating with Alice in Wonderland the Musical, which stars Jade Douris-O’Hara as Alice, Colangelo as the Cheshire Cat and Umeh as the Queen of Hearts, also through August. For tickets at a range of prices go to: Shakespeare By The Sea | Theatre | Halifax | Nova Scotia.

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