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The Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

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Chekhov International Theatre Festival

In cooperation with “Cheek by Jowl” (London)

Premiere: May 18, 2003 (V Chekhov International Theatre Festival)

Director	Declan Donnellan
Set and Costumes Design	Nick Ormerod
Lighting Design	Judith Greenwood
Orsino, Duke of Illyria	Alexander Arsentiev
Sebastian, brother to Viola	Sergey Mukhin, Alexey Koryakov
Antonio, a seacaptain, friend to Sebastian	Mikhail Zhigalov
Another seacaptain, friend to Viola	Vsevolod Boldin,yury Makeev
Valentine	Yury Makeev, Anton Shurtsov
Curio	Mikhail Dementiev
Sir Toby Belch, kinsman to Olivia	Alexander Feklistov
Sir Andrew Aguecheek	Igor Teplov, Vsevolod Boldin
Malvolio, steward to Olivia	Dmitry Shcherbina
Feste, fool to Olivia	Igor Yasulovich, Evgeny Pisarev
Olivia, a rich countess	Alexey Dadonov, Eugeny Samarin
Viola	Andrey Kuzichev, Sergey Demidov
Maria, Olivia’s gentlewoman	Ilia Ilin

Shakespeare is obsessed with human love. “Twelfth Night” is a play about love and identity, about difficulties of love, about how our identity dissolves in love, about love verging on madness and fear and spiritual revelations. The love Shakespeare shares with us in the play is as cruel as hope itself. It makes us think of the delusions of passion, of the eternal “magical mirror” of appearances and reality. The striking detail is that Viola in “Twelfth Night” has a line identical to one of Iago’s – “I am not what I am.
Very often Shakespeare writes about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. We come to the theatre to see Shakespeare’s characters fall in love, suffer from love, grant and reject love. We come to see the kind of love we fear, the love we all dream about, the love we need, the love we avoid, the love that is perhaps our only reality.

Declan Donnellan

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VIDEO

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4, 5 June 2018

Mossovet Theatre (Moscow)