So, you might ask: How does it work, resetting "Twelfth Night" to late 1800s Louisiana?

Quite brilliantly, in fact.

The play was very good. (I don't know how all Shakespeare festivals are, but for ours, we have some "outside talent" come in - I don't think our theater department would be large enough to sustain four or five plays, done on tight rotation, anyway. There are a number of actors who come back year after year - the man playing Malviolo last night was the lugubrious cop in last year's "Guys and Dolls).

I may have seen Twelfth Night years ago - the girl-dressed-as-boy theme is familiar, as is how the whole thing is unravelled at the end - but that version was clearly not as good as this version.

Ilyria has become "Ilyria Parish." The lovesick count (who was played wonderfully well by the actor doing him) was sort of a nouveau-riche shipping magnate (that's how Antonio's arrest could be worked in). The Fool was a Yankee (I believe the actor playing him was from New York; he let some of what may have been his natural way of speaking shine through, and a number of the characters referred derisively to him as "Yankee.") Olivia, for much of the play (well, until she started to fall in love with "Cesario") wore the old-timey full mourning that a woman in the South of that era would have worn. Viola and Sebastian, while they did not look greatly alike (the actor and actress playing them), were dressed the same (in top boots, dark pants, cap, and a blue sailor's jacket) and they spoke much the same (they, in contrast to most of the other actors, spoke with a "neutral Midwestern" sort of accent - actually, rather like I talk. Except I do not talk in blank verse.)

Accents were used to great effect in this play. I once said here that in England, you could guess someone's social class by their accent, but not so much in America. I rescind that statement; I see now how the Louisiana accents were used (from the almost-impenetrable argot of Captain to the better-enunciated (but still clearly South Louisiana) speech of the Count). Several of the actors in the production actually WERE from Louisiana, so perhaps they had heard the accents more frequently and they were certainly good at doing them, they rang very true. (I am assuming the actors do not normally speak Cajun-style.)

There were clear differences between how the servants spoke and how the upper-class spoke (well, except for Malviolo, who seemed to put on airs and sounded like a Louisianan trying to sound British).

Incidental music was provided by a three man Cajun band (guitar, squeezebox, and that plastron-thing that fills the role of a washboard). They stood over to one side of the stage, under a "gaslamp" near Orsino's balcony...the whole play was done without changing sets; one half the stage was Orsino's balcony and porch, the other half was Olivia's house (balcony and veranda), but it also played the role of the tree that the "conspirators" hid in to watch their prank on Malviolo begin.

(O poor Malviolo!)

All of the actors were good, though I found that the love-struck Count Orsino (who got the chance to chew the scenery just a little bit (but not enough to not seem right)), and Sir Toby Belch (Fat, drunken, lecherous, joking old planter-type), and Malviolo were particularly good.

Oh, and the Fool was good as well. When he played "Sir Topas" (pronounced "Topaz" at least for this production) he did a very fine parody of an old-timey Gospel preacher. (Malviolo, rather than being in an asylum, was sitting out "on the dock of the bay" in the dark and fog (they actually used a fog machine), which was a rather effective change from the original play).

He also played the guitar and sang. Rather than the songs in the original play, he used some traditional songs: "House of New Orleans" made it in there, and at the very end, "Jambalaya" was used as the ending music. (in that case, the three-man Cajun band played along with him)

There were a few little changes here and there - mostly of proper names ("Boudreaux' bedchamber," for example) and the scene before Sebastian and Olivia plight their troth was rewritten to imply they had spent the night together (and all that includes). (And Sebastian was given Mardi Gras beads instead of a pearl). And the priest was given a few lines, something about shriving Sebastian, I think?

Two of the male roles (Valentine and Fabian) were given to women: Valentine was a maid, and Fabian was - well, I'm not sure what SHE was, she hung around with Toby and didn't seem very respectful of Olivia if Olivia was in fact her mistress and employer. (Those switches may have partly have been to give enough "partners" for the dancing at the very end - everyone out on stage (the two couples, all the servants, Belch, and Aguecheek) went into the traditional zydeco-style dancing to end the play)

My only complaint, if I may have one? The accents, wonderful as they were, at times made it harder for me to understand what was being said. I know I missed some of the wordplay because I was distracted by the odd-to-me way that bayou people have of pronouncing some of their vowels (to my ear it sounds like they start out doing one - say, an "a" - and it ends up as another, say an "o"). But that's a minor quibble, and I can certainly read the play to catch what I missed.

In fact, I do think it will be my next Shakespeare read.