Call me corny or call me sentimental. (You can. Seriously. Both of these things may be true.) But Twelfth Night has been my favorite Shakespeare show since very early memory. It was the first Shakespeare I ever saw, actually; in Telluride, after fishing or playing soccer or something else with my family when I was young, we stumbled upon an evening production in one of their giant parks. It was the scene where Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek and that other guy are hiding in the bushes while Malvolio reads the faulty letter. And my brother literally could not stop laughing. He was laughing so hard through the next few scenes that the usher had to come over him and tell us to calm him down or we would have to leave. I think we ended up leaving. I hadn't scene a production since then, but I did Viola's monologues in high school. And there was the time in Actors and Directors in college, where someone did a scene from it and Mary Robinson laughed so hard that she fell off her chair. The class stopped in horror and a fit of giggles, and from behind the risers in the corner we saw her hand frantically waving us on: "I'M FINE! KEEP GOING."
And the production I saw tonight lived up to all of my expectations and childhood memories. Anne Hathaway was mesmerizing, Audra MacDonald was radiant, Hamish Linklater was da best. I laughed hard (though not as hard as my brother...?), I cried a little (for happy rather than sad), and I felt a distinct surge of joy throughout, and rightness. I had better seats than Angela Lansbury. Opa was probably jealous of me, or he was there, smiling, wondering if she'll ever do a follow-up to Murder, She Wrote.
And tonight was a Full Moon.
