The New York Times
by Ben Brantley, Thursday November 9, 2006

Shakespeare in That Universal Language: Theater

Boundaries melt like ice cubes in August in the Chekhov International Theater Festival’s blissful production of “Twelfth Night,” which runs through Sunday at the Harvey Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Lines traditionally relied upon to separate sexes, scenes, senses and, for that matter, languages dissolve into a mist of theatrical enchantment in this all-male Russian-speaking interpretation of Shakespeare’s tale of identities under siege in the land of Illyria.

There may be moments when, like the play’s love-bewitched characters, you’ll feel like slapping your brow to dislodge the clouds of disorientation crowding your head. While the drag accoutrements are minimal, there are times when you suddenly remember, with a breathless “oh,” that the lithe young woman dressed as a boy is first of all, yes, a man.

And how can it be that you find yourself thinking you have rarely heard the sense of Shakespeare rendered with such enlightening exactness and musicality, when the words you’re listening to are not remotely like English, Elizabethan or otherwise?

A bit of advice, per Shakespeare: stop trying to analyze, and surrender to the stream of sensations. As one character in the play wisely counsels, “If it be thus to dream, then let me sleep.” When your guides are as magically accomplished as Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, the British artists who created Cheek by Jowl and are this show’s director and designer, you can truly go with the flow with no fear of drowning.

To many theatergoers the idea of hearing Shakespeare in anything other than its original tongue is akin to watching ballet performed by inanimate statues. The play may be the thing, but in Shakespeare, the words — with all their distinctively English textures and sounds — make the play. Don’t they?

The glorious surprise of this “Twelfth Night” — which made its debut in Moscow, has since toured Europe (it was the hot ticket in London when I was there this summer) and moves on from New York for an American tour that includes stops in Arizona, Chicago and California — is in how it finds an alchemical substance in Shakespeare that transcends the verbal.

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