Michael Gabriel Goodfriend and Ali Ahn Photo

From: Photo Flash: Pearl Theatre Company's TWELFTH NIGHT

THE PEARL THEATRE COMPANY is pleased to begin the third production of its 25 th Anniversary Season, Shakespeare's capricious comedy, Twelfth Night (Or What You Will). The opening night of THE PEARL THEATRE COMPANY'S production will be on February 2 nd , the same day as the first recorded performance of the play in 1602. A harrowing shipwreck separates twins Viola and Sebastian-but tragedy turns to comedy when they wash up on the shores of Illyria, a land turned upside-down by passion and a colorful cast of joyful, melancholy characters. In THE PEARL THEATRE COMPANY'S production of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's madcap dance of mistaken identities, cunning plans, and miraculous discoveries, the only real mistake to make is not to love at all. The Play ponders love lost and found and explores the troubled relationship between disguise and desire. Washed up on distant shores, Viola mourns for a brother drowned in a shipwreck she herself narrowly escaped. Viola, however, is no languisher and quickly improvises a plan, disguising herself as the young man 'Cesario,' taking service with Duke Orsino...and shaking the foundations of this strange world. Twelfth Night offers us a world lush and joyful, but twilit, where not everyone can participate in happily ever after-a world that ends in What You Will, the subtitle that reminds the audience not to take it all too seriously-it is a comedy after all. And as such it must be both what we want, and what we make of it. As is love. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare