David Mamet's production of Twelfth Night opened with the sound of a distant flute. Orsino and Curio were leaning against a wall, and were lost in thought. The flute stopped and all was still as we experienced the vacancy of Orsino's expression and the stasis that engulfed him. Life without love, it seemed, was more than sad; it was plainly dull. The mood was right for the opening; both serious and laughable, it pulled us in as it offered a perspective. Mamet was careful not to rush or force his effects. He allowed each scene to search its form. Seeing, for example, that there is much talk in the opening acts, he enabled this talk to occur with an unhurried confidence, establishing character, nuance, and theme as he proceeded. New colors were added to what fast became a crisp, textured, and cumulative stage experience. In the end, Mamet's production offered a fleeting glimpse of the play's metaphysical bounty.

… [The Mamet-Circle Repertory Company staging of Twelfth Night took place in] a theatre that seats 160. The trestle stage cannot measure more than six by twelve yards. Mamet, however, mastered the limitations of his stage, and extended the space through a vision of the play that related festivity to life. Furthermore, he grounded that vision in a close reading of the text.

Fred Kolouch's deceptively simple setting was outlined by a high and decaying stone wall that broke off to blend with distant cuffs. The time seemed Mediterranean winter, and we were either in Olivia's garden or just beyond the garden gate. The gate itself was arched, fixing the scene with the prospect of a far and swelling sea. The green-blue sky and sea made the gray-brown rocks colder still. Though a potentially tragic land, however, the place held fast to hope and life, as did the lone and undulating rose vine that worked along the mountain path straining for the sun. The wall contained a mysterious empty statuary niche which was perhaps a muted echo of the unfulfilled life Viola—as "patience on a monument"—would miraculously evade. This was Illyria: antique yet modern in its ambiguity, beautiful yet potentially harsh, illusory yet real, informed by seriousness but happy in an unblinking way.

Mamet made one choice that could be labeled as gimmickry. But I thought that his adoption of a manifold costume metaphor was a fine intuition into the play's heart. Quite simply, the clothing spanned the range of modern history. There were among others, an Edwardian Malvolio, an eighteenth-century Sir Andrew in three-cornered hat, a buccaneer Antonio in bandanna with sword, a Napoleonic Officer with fixed bayonet, a military-cadet Cesario, and a modern Feste sporting Hush Puppies, chinos, and a blue ski sweater adorned with prancing deer. Some in the New York press attacked the approach as irresponsible eclecticism. But uniformity in costuming is, as we know, a relatively modern innovation, and the thought of consciously returning to the older convention for Twelfth Night was intriguing. Why then did Mamet want his costumes "visible" in so unexpected a way? He answered that since he had no idea how people dressed in Illyria, he had allowed the actors to determine their costuming on the basis of their character's needs. (The play is located sympathetically in Shakespeare's England, of course, but Elizabethan garb is not really the issue here.) Mamet's answer seemed evasive, or at best partial. This may have been the idea but, in Eric Bentley's phrase, what was the idea behind the idea?

I think there were two: the costumes functioned as emblems of consciousness and as masks. As emblems they revealed how different characters saw themselves. Some, like Feste, were free and wore whatever suited them; others, like Sir Andrew, were imprisoned in outdated modes. Malvolio wore his aspirations; Viola/Cesario wore her/his division. Fascinating perspectives in consciousness evolved when, for example, a "modern" character would address one historically older. But what exactly was modern here? What was old? In a play concerned with illusion and reality, the costumes united with the setting to create an aura of controlled ambiguity.

But as the performance progressed and its poetry took hold, the costumes began to function as masks. The differences in styles of dress dissolved in a deepening coherence of mood, implying that sexual differences were dissolving in the fundamental unity of human passions. The interpretation was not oppressively stated; rather, it seemed to breathe with the play. Mamet was not implying that men and women were the same; he was rendering the nature of their differences problematical in order to relate the mask-before-the-face to the denouement's face-before-the-mask. And when, at the end of the performance, the unity of the denouement evolved into the unity of actors donning street clothes, the happy implication of the play's ending spilled into New York's Sheridan Square, with the ultimate irony being the nature of the world they fell into. The production's philosophy could be stated in the phrase: an image of happiness and love created and questioned.

The unforced thoughtfulness of the interpretation was joyously experienced in the immediacy of performance. If Sir Toby and Olivia lacked some definition, and if Orsino had trouble with some of his verse, the other principals were excellent. But of them all, a beautifully balanced quartet stands out: Malvolio, Maria, Feste, and Viola.… Malvolio (played by the company's artistic director, Marshall Mason) was visibly controlled but suffered bouts of agitation.… Mason was elegant and reserved. He walked on the balls of his feet as if fearing contact with the common clay. Fastidiously attired in Edwardian style, sporting top hat, tails, and white gloves, he allowed himself the small sartorial excesses of the would-be dandy. He was given to modest coughs, and had a smile that broke just beyond nature into insincerity. There was a serious point to his elegance; he wore his ambitions on a brocaded vest. Here was a steward: efficient, respected, trusted, and true.… reading of the letter was restrained, leisured, and logical. He was a calm man reasoning his way to ridicule, and he held onto dignity a little while longer, which made his eventual fall a little more painful. Our laughter was insured, however, by his insufferable conceit. When he spoke the line "Jove, I thank thee," he thought of himself as addressing an equal.

Marceli Rosenblatt's Maria was more Olivia's gentlewoman than her chambermaid. Diminutive and fiercely loyal, she would interpose herself between her lady and dangers like Malvolio. Gracious, sane, and substantial, with a touch of effervescence, she was the sparkling club soda, if you will, to her lady's darker wine. She was a friend and future wife to Sir Toby and not … his mere brawling mate. Her comic timing was first-rate, heightened by understatement. Instead of yelling in an obvious and guttural way, "He's in yellow stockings," she allowed herself a degree of seriousness that recoiled into extended laughter as she broke into a grin.…

On a very different level was Colin Stinton's Feste. He can be best described in a bit of staging. After Malvolio has insulted the revelers in the "kitchen" scene, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria plot their revenge. Feste has no lines at this point, for Shakespeare seems to have overlooked the exit. Feste's duration in the scene is thus open to interpretation, and some directors have kept him on the stage asleep. Mamet keeps him there awake with telling results. Feste sits apart listening to the plot, and does not approach the rest until Maria's "and let the fool make a third." His silent presence offers an unobtrusive witness to the festivity, and simultaneously makes a fine character point. Feste can be played as the secret keeper of hard truths, and his silence here contributed to that aura of private knowledge and existence. Since his singing could hold the stage unaccompanied, and his speech had the precision and command of wit, Stinton was also funny and touching. When Sir Toby and Sir Andrew departed to continue their carousing, they left this modern Feste alone working a crossword puzzle.

Finally, Lindsay Crouse. Her Viola was, I think, the spirit of the Circle Repertory's Twelfth Night. When playing Cesario, she did not insist on reminding us that she was a woman, or try to play at being a man before Olivia. She played the passion of the verse instead, and stressed the truth of feeling within the sexual role. Her playing was reinforced by some shrewd staging. For example, as Viola, she responded to the Sea Captain's kindness by placing her hand on his knee in a gesture of reciprocal warmth (I. ii); as Cesario, she echoed the gesture by placing her hand on Orsino's knee (II. iv). In this way the human being shone through the particular instance of disguise, a disguise which, in any event, was rendered less restricting when viewed against the multitude of "disguises" on stage. The approach made Olivia's response to Cesario credible. Olivia was not falling in love with a woman dressed as a man; she was falling in love with another passionate human being. During the "willow cabin" speech, for instance, Olivia approached tears and paused before saying in a hushed whisper, "you might do much." With Orsino, Crouse simply expressed a restrained love which he could take as friendship and which we could see as more. The ease of the performance was a pleasure, and it was sane for today.

The image of Lindsay Crouse that remains is of her gaze. It was unsentimental, clear-eyed, and brave. It was searching.… Mamet and company took us to a new realm of experience: Shakespeare's land of Illyria.