Ben
Brantley

March 30, 2015

Every so often, evidence arises that acting might just be the most satisfying profession on the planet. Take the company called Bedlam, which is putting on not one but two inspired productions of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” in a small and airless room in the garment district that seats about 50, and making you feel like its members are the luckiest people alive. The actor-envy inspired by the five-member cast here isn’t of the usual order. It’s not because these performers are more glamorous, more famous or richer than the common herd. You don’t see their egos being stroked into tumescence by mass admiration. And I seriously doubt if any of them have swimming pools or personal chefs. But in the two productions in which they appear on alternate nights at the Dorothy Strelsin Theater, these five individuals allow you to experience vicariously the heady delight of becoming other people, and then other people who are pretending to be other people altogether. And, oh, the insights and uncommon pleasures to be gleaned from such acts of transmutation.