"Twelfth Night: Or What You Will" by Leslie Rigoulot So it was Shakespeare who started the long standing comedic

tradition of cross-d ressing for laughs! Actually the Bard used "Twelfth Night" as an examination of gender by making Count Orsino's court all male and Olivia's almost all female. D irector Trevor Nunn, previously artistic director of the Royal Shakespearean Com pany has assembled a gifted cast to give life to an unusual story. Identical twins Viola (Imogen Stubbs) and Sebastian (Steven Mackintosh) are sepa rated when their shop sinks and each believes the other dead. To survive in the strange land she washes up in, Viola assumes a male identity and joins the court of Duke Orsino (Toby Stephens). Orsino is in love with Countess Olivia (Helena Bonham Carter) and sends Violia who is now Cesario to woo her. Olivia falls in l ove with Cesario. To complicate matters Olivia's household is in an struggle bet ween the officious steward Malvolio (Nigel Hawthorne) and Olivia's maid, Maria ( Imelda Staunton). Going from one household to another and giving sarcastic comme nt is the fool, Feste (Ben Kingsley). Imogen Stubbs carries most of the storyline admirably, making the change from da inty girl to swaggering military man believable. And Trevor Nunn gives the sella r cast enough room to make the Shakespearean dialog come to life. "Twelfth Night " is not to be missed. Twelfth Night (1996) There's Something Verboten in Illyria By STEPHEN HOLDEN Published: October 25, 1996 Illyria, that Shakespearean hotbed of thwarted desire and sexual dissimulation, is a brooding coastal landscape of mist-shrouded cliffs and Gothic revival archi tecture in Trevor Nunn's voluptuously atmospheric film version of ''Twelfth Nigh t.'' Moping about in her castle, Olivia (Helena Bonham Carter), a beautiful bere aved countess mourning the recent deaths of her father and brother, hides her gr ief behind a heavy black veil. When she removes it, her hair is a mass of Aubrey Beardsley tendrils, her lips curled into a sullen pre-Raphaelite pout. As she t hrows her head back in an exaggerated gesture of romantic agony, one's first imp ulse is to run for the smelling salts. The movie's late-19th-century setting of dim candlelit rooms and bittersweet pia no music suits the director's treatment of Shakespeare's comedy as a moody pre-F reudian allegory. Without bending the play too badly out of shape, this version treats ''Twelfth Night'' as a comic meditation on desire, disguise and inherent bisexuality. It takes seriously the mad crush Olivia develops on Viola (Imogen Stubbs), a shi pwrecked young woman who is posing as an adolescent boy named Cesario. It takes equally seriously the desperate passion that Viola develops for Orsino (Toby Ste phens), the dashing count for whom she goes to work in men's garb and who pines with chest-beating melodrama for the intransigently celibate Olivia. In the movi e's most sensual moment, the disguised Viola gives Orsino a sponge bath, practic ally drooling over his naked body as he confides his lovesick fantasies. In calmly presenting the homoerotic elements of these tangled connections, the m ovie suggests that an essential sexual ambiguity exists in all of us once the de fining plumage of one sex has been exchanged for that of the other. Having turne d herself into a boy, Viola, whom Ms. Stubbs plays with a chipper wide-eyed smir k, gamely learns how to play billiards, smoke cigars and ride horses. For all his aggressive courting of Olivia, Orsino, a hypermacho soldier, seems t o be much fonder of the ''effeminate'' Cesario than he is of Olivia. When Viola finally reveals her true sex, he sweeps her up and instantly steps from the role of mentor and protector into that of lover. At the same time, Olivia, unable to respond to Orsino, becomes wildly infatuated with this tomboy in disguise. As F este (Ben Kingsley), the play's jesting commentator, darts back and forth betwee n Olivia's and Orsino's households, dispensing nuggets of sarcastic wisdom, Mr. Kingsley's laughing brown eyes seem to be stealing glimpses a century ahead into

the age of sexual reassignment and hormone therapy. Of course, there is more to ''Twelfth Night'' than romance. There is rowdy farce in the drunken antics of Sir Toby Belch (Mel Smith), his ludicrously prancing a nd preening pal Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Richard E. Grant) and Olivia's maid, Maria (Imelda Staunton). The crowning comic touch is Nigel Hawthorne's portrayal of O livia's fawning steward, Malvolio, as a pompous Victorian prude with upper-class pretensions. Considerably older than the usual Malvolio, Mr. Hawthorne's charac ter acts like a self-appointed guardian of moral virtue who proudly believes him self to be beyond sex until he is tricked into imagining Olivia loves him and be comes her groveling, slavering fool. An uncomfortable message conveyed by this h arshly funny performance suggests that as much as desire may attenuate, the sexu al pilot light never goes off. ''Twelfth Night,'' like almost every other recent movie adapted from Shakespeare , takes some broad cinematic liberties. The movie begins with a voice-over narra tion and a shipboard scene that establishes Viola and her twin brother, Sebastia n (Stephen Mackintosh), as professional purveyors of gender-bending entertainmen t. As it goes along, the film compulsively cross-cuts among the characters, rare ly allowing a scene to build. The actors' line readings tend to undercut Shakesp eare's poetry to maintain a cooler contemporary tone. For all that has been thrown out, reduced and tacked on, this ''Twelfth Night'' is deeper than most in the way it confronts the psychological forces seething be hind the conventional facades of masculine and feminine. It fully recognizes the genius of the play as its comic understanding of the degree to which desire (th e more frustrated the better), and not love, is what makes the world go around. ''Twelfth Night'' is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Children might be b ored by the characters' romantic problems. TWELFTH NIGHT Directed by Trevor Nunn; written by Mr. Nunn, based on the play by William Shake speare; director of photography, Clive Tickner; edited by Peter Boyle; music by Shaun Davey; production designer, Sophie Becher; produced by Stephen Evans and D avid Parfitt; released by Fine Line Features. Running time: 105 minutes. This fi lm is rated PG. WITH: Helena Bonham Carter (Olivia), Richard E. Grant (Sir Andrew Aguecheek), Ni gel Hawthorne (Malvolio), Ben Kingsley (Feste), Mel Smith (Sir Toby Belch), Imel da Staunton (Maria), Toby Stephens (Orsino), Imogen Stubbs (Viola) and Stephen M ackintosh (Sebastian). New York Times Twelfth Night BY ROGER EBERT / November 8, 1996 cast & credits Viola/Cesario: Imogen Stubbs Olivia: Helena Bonham Carter Sir Andrew Aguecheek: Richard E. Grant Malvolio: Nigel Hawthorne Feste: Ben Kingsley Directed By Trevor Nunn . Screenplay By Nunn , Based On The Play By William Shak espeare . Running Time: 125 Minutes. Rated PG-13 (For Mild Thematic Elements). Add_to_queue_mini_off Printer-friendly E-mail this to a friend AddThis Social Bookmark Button Shakespeare's ``Twelfth Night'' bears something of the same relationship to his serious romances (like ``Romeo and Juliet'') that, if you will forgive the compa rison, ``Airplane!'' bears to ``Airport.'' Adjust for period, genre and style, a

nd acknowledge the fact that Shakespeare occupies a different creative universe than, say,David Zucker, and the intention is the same: Elements that are heartbr eaking when handled seriously become funny when they're pushed over the top. Trevor Nunn's new film version of ``Twelfth Night,'' a lighthearted comedy of ro mance and gender confusion, creates a romantic triangle out of the same sorts of mistaken sexual identities that inspired ``Some Like It Hot.'' And Nunn directs it in something of the same spirit; the film winks at us while the characters f all in love. To be sure, Imogen Stubbs makes a better boy than Jack Lemmon made a girl, but nobody's perfect. The period has been moved up to the 18th century, and the dialogue has been slig htly simplified and clarified, but Shakespeare's language is largely intact (and easier to understand than in Baz Luhrmann's new ``Romeo & Juliet''). Also intac t is the elaborate low-comedy subplot involving the servants, which gets too muc h screen time relative to the main story, but supplies showcases for a ribald ca st of character actors. The story: A great storm at sea capsizes a ship. A young woman named Viola (Imog en Stubbs) is washed ashore, but believes her twin brother Sebastian has drowned . Finding herself in the unfamiliar kingdom of Ilyria, where a young woman might be at hazard, she dresses in her brother's uniform, cuts her hair, pastes on a false mustache, and poses as a young man named Cesario. Soon she wins a position at the court of young Count Orsino (Toby Stephens), who is desperately in love with the Lady Olivia (Helena Bonham Carter). The count s ends his new page to stand before Olivia's gate and press his case. But there ar e complications: Viola falls in love with Orsino, and Olivia falls in love with Viola. Since Viola cannot tell either one she is really a woman, almost every si tuation involving her is rich with double meaning. ``Twelfth Night'' has been directed by Trevor Nunn, for 20 years a stalwart of t he Royal Shakespeare Company. He knows the material, and knows the right actors to play it. Shakespeare's language is not hard to understand when spoken by acto rs who are comfortable with the rhythm and know the meaning. It can be impenetra ble when declaimed by unseasoned actors with more energy than experience (as the screaming gang members in ``Romeo & Juliet'' demonstrate). Nunn's casting choices make for real chemistry between Imogen Stubbs and Helena Bonham Carter (whose film debut was in Nunn's ``Lady Jane'' in 1986). Bonham Car ter, who has grown wonderfully as an actress, walks the thin line between love a nd comedy as she sighs for the fair youth who has come on behalf of the count. S he wisely plays the role sincerely, leaving the winks to the other characters. Shakespeare's comedies all offered two levels, high and low, and here the bawdy is handled by Mel Smith as Olivia's kinsman Sir Toby Belch, Richard E. Grant as his foppish and absurd friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Ben Kingsley as the trou badour Feste. But the downstairs action is stolen by Nigel Hawthorne (``The Madn ess of George III'') as Malvolio, Olivia's chief of staff, who convinces himself Olivia loves him. Swollen with his self-importance, proud that he is impervious to the failings of mortals, he falls hard, and Shakespeare is just barely able to save his heart from breaking. Nunn sets up all of these tensions and misunderstandings in an enchanting, begui ling style, and then lobs in a grenade with the unexpected arrival of the twin b rother, Sebastian. The last scenes are exercises in double takes and sly timing. All's well that ends well, of course, but the full title of the play provides a better key: ``Twelfth Night, or, What You Will.'' Since the notion of romantic love is what all of the characters are really in love with, it matters not so mu ch who they love as that they love, allowing for the quick adjustments of focus

at the end. The movie's key player is Imogen Stubbs, who was Emma Thompson's rival in the 19 95 ``Sense and Sensibility'' (she was the character Hugh Grant was engaged to, a gainst his druthers). Here she has just that reserve that makes her character's ridiculous situation work. She must contain her feelings about both Orsino and O livia, even in such touchy situations as when scrubbing her employer's back in t he bath. It calls for perfect tact, which she was born with, along with a twinkl e in her eye. Chicago Sun/Times