Shakespeare For The 21st Century

“Lord,” Ophelia says in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, ​“we know what we are but not what we may be.”

Many theatergoers feel certain they know what Shakespeare’s plays are, but that doesn’t mean they know what they may be. First of all, they may be fun — and very funny — as shown in the current production of Twelfth Night, directed by Carl Cofield, at Yale Repertory Theatre through April 6. The show is not to be missed, if you have any interest in classic plays reimagined for the 21st century. Cofield’s vision almost makes a new play of his source material with its wonderful treatments, showing how to break bad on the Bard.

Shakespeare plays may be set almost anywhere and shaped to any time, so it goes almost without saying that any new staging will have a new spin. Cofield’s bold reimagining treats the setting — the quasi-legendary land of Illyria — as akin to Wakanda. The action takes place in an Afrofuturist world that comes vividly alive as though part computer game, part comic-book universe, part Shakespeare by way of African and Asian culture — all thanks to Riw Rakkulchon’s elegantly spare set, Samuel Kwan Chi Chan’s colorful lighting design, Brittany Bland’s virtual-reality projection design, composer and sound designer Fred Kennedy’s retro-futurist soul arrangements, and Mika H. Eubanks’s truly spectacular costumes.

This is not the typical American Shakespeare production enacted by a bunch of wanna-be Brits. The cast is mostly African-American and all non-Anglo. The choice is to downplay iambic pentameter in favor of speech rhythms that are ear-catching and varied. This makes each character a study in idiosyncrasy, and it’s entertaining and fascinating to watch different aspects of the cast jell.

First of all, there’s William DeMerritt as Duke Orsino. He’s handsome and buff in his airy loungewear. ​“If music be the food of love, play on,” he says, and gets his groove on with virtual-reality goggles that put him in his own personal music video. But not even digital fantasy can distract him from his love for his neighbor Olivia (Tiffany Denise Hobbs), a preemptory and put-together aristo who, after losing a father and a brother, wants no further men in her life.

Which is good, because she’s got a household-full as it is. There’s her puritanical and tyrannical steward, Malvolio (Allen Gilmore — familiar to the Rep stage in his Pantalone fat-suit for Chris Bayes’s celebrated commedia trifecta). There’s her drunken scalawag of an uncle, Sir Toby Belch (Chivas Michael), his drinking crony Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Abubakr Ali), who has designs on Olivia, and the itinerant entertainer, or artist generally known as, Feste (Erron Crawford) and their sometime abettor Fabian (Raffeal A. Sears). These are the clowns of the show and it’s much to Cofield’s credit that they are amiably amusing. Michael makes Sir Toby a wild wanton past his prime — he’s incorrigible and incontinent, a sort of mini-Falstaff. Ali’s Aguecheek — in costumes that must be seen to be laughed at — is a walking, talking comedy skit, silly, vain, preening, and oddly endearing.

The sparring between Sir Toby and Gilmore’s lively patsy of a Malvolio set up the main comedy subplot, involving the fanning of Malvolio’s desires above his station. Olivia’s lady-in-waiting Maria, given a street duenna flair by Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, makes him believe his mistress is gaga for him, letting Gilmore have much sport with cross-garters and the poor fool’s desperate mugging. The prank’s sadistic turn in Part Two is enlivened by scary special effects and by Crawford’s take on Feste as Sir Topas, played as a thundering preacher. Indeed, Crawford’s Funkadelic Feste — whether winging about on a scooter or popping up with show-stopping songs full of jazzy vibes and breathy sway — is a stand-out aspect of this show, so much so that you might look for a side-screen housing extra footage of his numbers.

The romantic plot — since neither Aguecheek nor Malvolio will get anywhere with Olivia — is supplied by Moses Ingram’s fully engaging Viola, a shipwrecked virgin who affects being a man, Cesario, in order to serve Duke Orsino, whom she promptly falls in love with. As the duke’s embassy to the proud Olivia, Cesario/Viola becomes the lady’s object of amour. Winking from the wings is a threesome where they might manage to work it all out, but that’s not necessary since Viola has a twin, Sebastian (Jakeem Dante Powell), also shipwrecked in Illyria, who will find his way into the triangle right when he should. Powell’s ready-to-please Sebastian is one of the more overt comic aspects of Part Two.

As Olivia, Tiffany Denise Hobbs is vital to the romantic comedy of the play. We watch her go from steely and self-contained prig to girl anxiously smitten as her reserve crumbles before Viola’s winning ways. She and DeMeritt’s brooding Orsino probably wouldn’t have lasted a year, so it’s well the duo’s desires find a twin of the appropriate gender. Hobbs and DeMeritt wear well the fabulous costumes that deck them throughout the show (a further subplot is seeing what they’ll wear next), while the twins sport a colorful unisex getup — including hair — that gives them a rich sense of having come from elsewhere.

The reuniting of Viola and Sebastian is played with a warmth that gives power to the conclusion, while Feste’s comeuppance to the undeluded Malvolio lands with appropriate force. There’s poetic justice, and much visual poetry afoot in this remarkable fashioning of Illyria, a world of comic duels with electric sabers, of soundtracks and effects conjured out of the air, of misplaced desire, thwarted ambition, comical cowardice, staunch loyalty, love at first sight, and the kind of confusion furnished by what Feste calls ​“the whirligig of time” that takes a master craftsman of theater to put right. The subtitle of Twelfth Night is ​“what you will” — and do what you will to Will’s play, its wit shines through. Here, it’s ably showcased by a spirited and inspired reworking of his ancient magic.

Twelfth Night runs at University Theatre, 222 York St., through April 6. Visit the Yale Repertory Theatre website for tickets and more information.