Synetic Scores Again with Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

With all the snow this winter, power outages have been occurring all over the country. The next time you find yourself without power, you might want to call the Synetic Theater troupe to perform their current production Twelfth Night in your area.

The play, set in the Gatsbyesque, 1920s era of silent films and the company's 10th production in its ongoing Silent Shakespeare series, creates enough energy to keep a huge neighborhood or even a good-sized city steeped in power for days.

Director Paata Tsikurishvilli says the linkage between the 1920s and the Shakespeare play was "natural."

"Much like the seminal novel of the period, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Shakespeare's play is a meditation on selfishness and shallowness, a satire at once melancholic and biting," Tsikurishvilli says in his director's notes. "In fact, many of the characters in Fitzgerald's novel seem direct descendants of those in Shakespeare's play - both works are peopled with the idle, indolent, hard-drinking rich, living purely for fun, in the moment, and with apparently nothing better to do than ostentatiously wallow in their private miseries or exact cruel and heartless revenge for grievances, real of imagined."

"Only the play's central character Viola (played brilliantly in the production by Tsikurishvilli's wife Irina) stands out from the rest of these petty aristocrats: a (Charlie Chaplin) Little Tramp-like figure, searching for love, deeply good and completely indestructible," he added.

The use of the 1920s setting also offers the opportunity for the talented cast to demonstrate a new-for-them style of movement based on the iconic dances of the 1920s such as the charleston and the jitterbug.

In short, if you like great theater, spirited dancing, Shakespeare, the 1920s, or early jazz music, you should see this play. But you will have to hurry. There are only 6 performances left this week.

But don't just take our word for it. Here's what the critics are saying:

• "The production is creative, entertaining, and oozing with charm". (The Washintonian)
• "A bouyantly entertaining evening during which, it seems, anything goes." (The Washington Post)
• "Layer after luscious layer." (from The DC Theater Scene)