Twelfth Night

On the surface, the Victorian era was a time of repression and strict morals. But surfaces can be misleading. In the case of the Victorians, there was often considerable eroticism lurking underneath.That disparity is at the heart of "Twelfth Night," which may be why director Christopher Marino has chosen a Victorian setting for the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's production of this Shakespearean comedy."Twelfth Night" is the festival's first public production in nearly two years and also its first to toy with the time period of one of Shakespeare's plays.

Victor/VictoriaWhen the Broadway musical comedy "Victor/Victoria" opens Tuesday and runs through April 25 at the Mechanic Theatre, Hopkins Plaza, you'll be able to follow the story of Victoria Grant, a beautiful woman who falls on hungry times and allows herself to be persuaded to headline at Paris' finest cabaret as a man impersonating a beautiful woman. Grammy Award-winning singer Toni Tennille stars in the title role. Show time is 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday.

Behind the scenes at Olney TheatreEver wonder what really goes on backstage? Go behind the scenes at the Olney Theatre Center on Saturday for its annual open house. Take self-guided tours of the costume, set and performance areas, or learn some tricks of the acting trade from the center's residing touring company, the National Players. You can also browse the costume shop flea market, see a costume and prop exhibit and peruse the information tables on the theater's programs, including student internships and volunteer opportunities.

It's been almost 10 years since theater students at Western Maryland College prepared a production of a William Shakespeare play."Twelfth Night," which opens at 8 p.m. Friday in Alumni Hall, is also a first for Professor Ron Miller, who came to WMC in 1987 and has never directed a Shakespeare play."

The plots of Shakespeare's romantic comedies are so alike it's sometimes difficult to tell the plays apart. A pair of twins is separated; a woman dons male garb; characters escape to the woods and fall in love. A few acts later, families are reunited, lovers are married and everyone lives happily ever after.Even the titles seem interchangeable: "All's Well That Ends Well," "As You Like It." The satiric Reduced Shakespeare Company - whose spoof, "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)

Back in the 18th century, Christmas was a time for family and friends, feasting and entertainment. The merriment went on for days, 12 to be exact. The season then concluded with a Twelfth Night Celebration -- more feasting, entertainment and the ritual of the burning of the greens.At the Francis Land House in Virginia Beach, Va., on Saturday you can witness a Twelfth Night Celebration from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Visitors will move back in time to 1783 as interpreters, dressed as Francis Land and members of his household, welcome guests.

News flash: For Christmas, death is out, angels are in! As a friend says, "Good heavens, what's the world coming to?"The truth is, this is the gentlest Christmas in many a year, with a surfeit of fuzzy-wuzzy get-in-touch-with-your-feelings movies and only one rock-'em-sock-'em adventure, and that one isn't even set against a context of terrorism, serial murder or invasion by genocidal maniacs from outer space. And there are two movies with angels in them, although both the angels appear to have a weakness for the gals.

The Maryland Chamber Singers' annual "Twelfth Night Concert and Holiday Feast" has become an institution, and a large crowd was on hand Friday at Broadneck High School to close out the holiday season with music.Amid a convivial atmosphere, aided by excellent post-concert food, two conclusions were reached.The first is that the Maryland Chamber Singers possess some talented members and enjoyable musical friends.This was readily apparent in the one-act comic operetta "The Reluctant Dragon," a cute Gilbert-and-Sullivan-like send-up of the St. George and the Dragon story, composed by the ubiquitous John Rutter.

The Francis Land House in Virginia Beach, Va., will be host to its Twelfth Night Celebration tomorrow from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.Christmas Day in the 18th century was a strictly religious observance. Socializing began the day after Christmas and continued for 12 days, ending with the Twelfth Night Celebration. The Land House celebration is a step back in time to that era with costumed interpreters in the role of Francis Land, his family and friends. Costumed guides will conduct tours of this decorated plantation home, built in the mid-18th century.

A CENTER Stage performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" was canceled last week due to the illness of actress Mia Korf, who plays the lead role of Viola.Rick Davis, associate artistic director at Center Stage, said the company does not have an understudy policy. "That decision is based on economics," he said."This kind of thing happens so rarely that it would not be feasible for us to incorporate such an arrangement. If some of the other actors in a play understudied the major roles and had to step in at the last minute, that would still create more holes in the play to fill in."

ARTS 'Labyrinth of Peace' Living Labyrinth for Peace by visionary artist and labyrinth builder Sandra Wasko-Flood runs through Jan. 10 at the Sub-Basement Artists Studios, 118 N. Howard St. Unlike mazes, labyrinths have one path that leads to the center and back. Wasko-Flood's Rainbow Labyrinth of Peace is an interactive installation of computer-programmed lights, designed to be walked. The exhibit also includes a labyrinth workshop Saturday, a peace workshop Dec. 20, a poetry reading Dec. 27 and a "peace panel" Jan. 3. Go to sbastudios.

As the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival prepares to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the production of Twelfth Night that opens Friday, it is grappling with major decisions that could change its fortunes. After a decade and a half, the company has yet to establish a real foothold in Baltimore. It continues to struggle artistically and, as a result, doesn't attract a large audience. Many productions have been emotionally remote, or earnest and plodding. Directors have cast skilled actors but have failed to make the best use of their talents.

Labor Day is the unofficial end of the lazy days of summer, but for more than a dozen young residents of a Severna Park community, it began the countdown to showtime. Since July, the tweens of Ben Oaks have been rehearsing almost daily, twisting their tongues around the "thees," "thys" and "ays" of William Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night and their brains around the complexities of its mistaken identities and romances. "Sometimes it was a drag--my friends all running off to do things, and I had to practice," said Jamie Murray, 14, a freshman at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville.

During her more than 25-year association with Anne Arundel Community College's Moonlight Troupers, performing arts department Chairwoman Barbara Marder has not witnessed a single Shakespeare production at the college, recalling that A Midsummer Night's Dream was offered about 30 years ago. From what I observed at last Thursday's rehearsal of Twelfth Night, it is about time the Bard got on the boards. The play looks to receive fine treatment from the drama club cast when it opens April 13 for a brief run at the Pascal Center for Performing Arts.

The Madness of Love By Katharine Davies. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 208 pages. $13.95. There is plenty of love but not nearly enough madness in this update of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night by a British novelist who was born not far from Stratford-on-Avon in 1968. Davies's adaptation, an ambitious debut, is certainly faithful and clever, but more than these virtues may be required for this work to hold its own as a novel. The book's setting is contemporary Illerwick, a tiny Welsh village by the sea, where infatuation has spread among the residents like a fever.

Hanging from a wooden post along a meandering gravel road deep in Baltimore County farm country is a placard with a pair of crisscrossed polo mallets and the enigmatic headline "Claustrophobia" scrawled across its face -- painted legibly but offering no indication of the underlying meaning to passers-by. In these parts, with the fields of soybeans and horse pastures extending as far as the eye can see and centuries-old family estates, a fear of enclosed spaces hardly seems a relevant concern.

If summer in Annapolis began Friday with the Naval Academy's commencement, tomorrow evening it will be in full swing when the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre opens its 37th season with Rock Around the Dock, an original music and dance revue, playing Thursdays through Sundays until June 28. Later in the summer, the outdoor stage is set for classic Shakespeare and Broadway offerings, including Twelfth Night on July weekends and the Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach...

'An Extraordinary, Ordinary Life' The life of "Miss Treva," a 20th-century working-class woman from Baltimore, will be explored in an exhibit opening today in celebration of Women's History Month at the Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument St. "An Extraordinary, Ordinary Life: The Life and Times of Miss Treva K. Walkling" features notable objects saved by Walkling (1907-1997) that illustrate her life and 47-year career as a waitress, as well as her love of travel, horse racing and dogs.

While many folks are into Day 6 of their annual after-the-holidays diet, a few others have yet to celebrate the last of the holidays, the Twelfth Night of Christmas. Do you know about it? If not, here's a short review. In the Christmas story as told in the Gospel of St. Matthew, the shepherds in the fields saw a star shining in the east. And the three wise men followed the star, bringing gifts to the newborn babe. Tradition says that the three wise men arrived in Bethlehem 12 days after Christmas, which on Western Christian calendars is Jan. 6. The celebration of their arrival is called Epiphany or, in secular words, Twelfth Night.

An abundance of pain lies just beneath the lightly romantic, gently comic surface of "Twelfth Night." One of the play's major themes is about having to suppress your truest self to be accepted by the dominant culture. It's about feeling powerless, about having to "pass." And that's a theme that resounds deeply for black Americans - or members of any minority group, really. So Sheldon Epps' decision to set this modern-day retooling of Shakespeare's story in Harlem in the 1940s was inspired.