Twelfth Night (Abrons Arts Center)
Opening Night: February 4, 2014
Closing: February 23, 2014
Theater: Abrons Arts Center Henry Street Settlement
Pig Iron Theatre Company brings its acclaimed, music-soaked take on Shakespeare’s wintertime comedy to New York for a limited three-week run. Featuring a five-piece Balkan-inspired band accompanying an ensemble of highly physical performers, and drawing on the company’s long history of creating genre-defying original theatre, Pig Iron’s Twelfth Night brings a distinctly American, full-bodied approach to a classic text.
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February 16, 2014
Any play with a character named “Sir Toby Belch” should leave you rolling in the aisles, but it’s rare to see a production of Twelfth Night that actually brings this Shakespearean comedy to life. That is why the current production by Pig Iron Theatre Company is such a lovely and even magical night at the theatre. A combination of excellent design, wonderful Balkan-inspired music, and physically engaged actors has created a production that has a palpable energy.
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February 7, 2014
Music is the food of love. And you can have it in excess at Pig Iron Theatre Company’s production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Like a troupe of wandering troubadours, the Philadelphia-based company is now visiting our fair city via the Abrons Arts Center. One of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, Twelfth Night is the story of Viola (Kristen Sieh), a shipwrecked young woman of Messaline who washes up on the shores of Illyria. Far from home and without fortune, she disguises herself as a boy named Cesario in order to become a page to Duke Orsino (Dito van Reigersberg). Orsino pines for the Countess Olivia (Birgit Huppuch), but Olivia has her sights set on Cesario. Meanwhile, Olivia’s steward Malvolio (Chris Thorn) starts to believe that Olivia only has eyes for him. Mistaken identity and unrequited love reign supreme until all is resolved in true Shakespearean fashion: with a wedding (or three).
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February 10, 2014
You have to duck to avoid Twelfth Nights these days; too many must-see productions are whizzing about. But honestly, don’t duck. Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company makes the impervious comedy seem freshly silly by going full goofball: Dan Rothenberg and the devising ensemble treat the text as a playground—respecting it, but sometimes in the way a two-year-old “respects” a super-bouncy couch. Maiko Matsushima’s concrete-park set even includes a quarter-pipe, which functions as a stage-high slide for love-stunned Orsino (Dito van Reigersberg) to collapse bonelessly against. Players can whoosh down it bottom-first—so obviously, they do.
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February 16, 2014
How do you exact revenge on people who have cruelly tricked you and humiliated you in front of the woman you work for and hope to marry? You steal the show, that’s how. That’s what Chris Thorn does as Malvolio in a stupendous scene in Pig Iron Theater Company’s Twelfth Night at the Abrons Arts Center. And stealing this particular show is no easy feat, because the whole production is pretty dazzling.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 12, 2014
If music is the food of love, as Orsino, Duke of Illyria, pronounces in the famous line that begins Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, expect to fall hard for the current production from the Philadelphia troupe Pig Iron. Inspired by Balkan gypsy music (according to a program note from director Dan Rothenberg), the show is buoyed along by a manic undercurrent even in its sharpest, most exquisitely clear-eyed moments, of which there are many. Like composer Rosie Langabeer’s music, its highs spin wildly and its lows are mournful and bottomless. In other words, Pig Iron’s Twelfth Night captures the giddy extremes of romantic beguilement, taking us along for its wild spin on the dance floor.
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