Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum is a Shakespearean repository of culture, and with their delectable production of the Bard’s comedy Twelfth Night this Topanga troupe has outdone itself in letting its collective hair down. If WGTB’s version of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth borrows from burlesque’s conventions, Twelfth draws heavily from slapstick to produce a crowd-pleasing spectacle.
For some reason, hidden and mistaken identities are a long standing plot and character theatrical device dating back to the Greeks. Here, following a shipwreck the youthful Viola (Willow Geer) contrives to disguise herself as a eunuch, calling herself “Cesario.” Camouflaged as a male, she becomes an envoy for Duke Orsino (Max Lawrence, who was so great as Boxer in WGTB’s staging of Orwell’s Animal Farm a while back) in his campaign to woo Olivia (Christine Breihan), a countess.