Bawdy, gender-bending Shakespeare comedy at Fringe Fest: Tim Mooney's "Breakneck Twelfth Night"

 If you have ever said to yourself, urging acceptance of a situation you don't understand and cannot

Tim Mooney concentrates the identity action of "Twelfth Night."

change, "It is what it is," you have lived in Shakespeare's Illyria, landlocked in reality, but with a seacoast to suit the playwright's purposes.

Indianapolis has benefited from two striking full-staged productions of "Twelfth Night" in recent years: Southbank's vivid, musically rich one in 2022, and a party-hearty, expansive version at Indianapolis Shakespeare Company's old White River State Park home, when in 2015 the company carrried the acronym HART as identifier.

How people identify is central to the plot and character twists of the Bard's comedy, making the show ripe in 2024 for the kind of freeze-dried treatment Tim Mooney specializes in. "Breakneck Twelfth Night" lives up to the squeezes Mooney has put on "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" in previous IndyFringe Festival appearances. (His survey of the history plays was in a category all its own, ramping up his unique style toward the peak of his virtuosity.)

Mooney's clever setting of much of Shakespeare's text within his own context-driven narration reminded me Thursday night that a line very close to today's "It is what it is" cliche is in the text. Besides, twice a near-relative of that sentiment ("That's all one") is conspicuous. The second time is in the play's concluding song, of which Mooney's performance to an original tune was a highlight.

The creator's guidance through all the Bard's tangled ambivalence, heightened by the actor's gestural and vocal highlighting of the bawdy phrases, embraces the confusion that even a fully staged version may not entirely clear up. He has thus made "Twelfth Night" what he wills it to be, and enlists our support in the fast-paced endeavor.

As he did with the Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet" and Polonius in "Hamlet," he puts laudable emphasis on the most playable character, Malvolio, the puritanical steward keen to be adequately appreciated and  tripped up by his own devices. But necessarily, Mooney roams among the dramatic personae adeptly, turning this way and that, subtly but firmly altering his voice to approximate believable dialogue.

With this show, I was especially drawn to admire how Mooney uses his hands. They gesture in a manner that would be insufferable if he was playing one character and sharing the stage with others. But when it comes to helping each character command the space around him/her and project both individual nature and intentions upon it, Mooney was a master opening night. The lines, even so expertly delivered, don't hit their marks unaided. A wholeness, however briefly glimpsed, must come through to the audience in every speech. 

The air of improvisation central to the play presents Mooney in his element, molding Shakespeare's people, whether they are foolish, serious, or mock-serious, toward a useful reminder of the play's subtitle, "What You Will." The traditional end of the Christmas season in riotous celebration  and revelation ("twelfth night") may not be to everyone's taste, but (all together now) it is what it is. "Breakneck Twelfth Night" makes no mistake about it.

[Photo: Indy Ghost Light]