Twelfth Night of the Living Dead, Gutsy Performance

The show is exactly how it sounds, if that's possible. In fact, it's even crazier than it sounds if that's possible. It opens making a clear point, and that point is that you will be laughing and cringing your way through the entire production. The famous words are there, with an agreeable amount of twists that make a nicely congealed original body of work stemming out of one of the Bard's solid classics. Can a Zombie find love? This play answers that question with a resounding...probably not. My immediate gut reaction was to be prepared for guts, but my gut had no idea how much of the guts to prepare for. The only way I could have felt more in the action of this play would've been if I was forced to eat the innards of the Shakespearian spewing characters myself. Lindsay Wolf as Viola gives an astonishing physical performance with guttural groans and back breaking shuffling, to the point where she was both disgustingly scary and mind numbingly adorable. The physicality of this play and expertly delivered monologues made this show. At one point in the show after getting her breast eaten off during an already extremely difficult monologue, Shashanah Newman playing Olivia wakes up from being dead with a dazzling display of body manipulation and control as she arches up off the floor without using her hands and suddenly stands straight up as if an invisible person was pushing her up from behind. The crowd ate it up, as they did the entirety of the show while watching the characters eat up each other. At times there was almost too much going on, which certainly provided a chaotic atmosphere for a chaotic premise. However, I'm sure I missed a few things here and there because I just couldn't watch it all at once. The same goes for some of the lines, because it's hard enough to follow old Bill without people getting eaten all over the place. I don't really see this as a negative for the play, because the insanity of it all really just made perfect sense and added to the complete spectacle. Hats off to the make-up crew as well, it was enjoyable to watch the transitions of the characters from normal, to sickly, to zombie. And of course, the spectacular amount of blood and guts was entertaining to say the least. Occasionally the characters would slip on the blood that was all over the floor, which was hysterical. The story fell to the side a little as you might expect, but I imagine if I was able to see it again I could follow along a little easier knowing what exactly I was in for, and possibly appreciate the adaptation itself a little more. When I could focus on the lines, the script edits and the actors' deliveries being presented amongst new surroundings for the original text were truly side-splitting. Altogether, it was a fun night spent at the Theatre and I hope this show is brought back again, especially for the Halloween season.