Shakespeare's Twelfth Night gets Dunedin twist with Flying Nun classics

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night will have a distinctly Ōtepoti twist, with a live band creating a backdrop of the iconic Dunedin Sound.

The new production reimagines the Bard's romantic comedy at the Globe Theatre in Dunedin, swapping the Balkans for the University of Otago during the early 1980s.

Music already infuses Twelfth Night, but director Brent Caldwell said his version weaved in iconic songs from the Dunedin Sound including Flying Nun classics.

"It just fits really, really nicely. We're not changing the language, but we're blending in the music that was the soundtrack to my time, the first time I was at the university back in the 1980s," he said.

"The play originally was written with lots and lots of music and we've just changed the music out, bought the Dunedin Sound in. It's magic."

Dunedin's Globe was a bit smaller than Shakespeare's but Caldwell said it added to the atmosphere.

"We've got 78 seats. But if you think of the original Globe Theatre, the groundlings were right by the stage and when I look at this theatre, I think 'yeah, that's the intimate experience we want'."

A rotating set helped the play transition between the different locations. Band posters lined the walls - many of which were souvenirs from gigs Caldwell went to, with his old stereo and records also adorning the set.

"We want people to think like they're walking into someone's garage, they've just turned up in a band rehearsal," Caldwell said.

The love triangles, deception and mistaken identities remained, but with an Ōtepoti flavour.

Musical director and guitarist Sam Meikle said they stayed as true as they could to the original recordings but there was beauty in the inaccuracies.

"Many of the songs you can't find tablature for or even chord sheets, some of the lyrics are wrong ... and so it was very much listening to the recordings and just playing together in this rehearsal room as a band," he said.

Then came the challenge of marrying the music with a centuries old text that had clear stage cues.

The band used wireless connections with their amps so they could move around and perform off stage, he said.

'If music be the food of love, play on'

Thomas Makinson was taking on the role of Duke Orsino, now the Vice Chancellor of the University in this adaptation.

He was pleased to be returning to The Globe.

"I've done many a production here so I'm sort of used to the sound environment and making sure that the audience feels included in everything we're doing because that's also something Shakespeare liked to do was make the audience feel really included in what the characters are saying and thinking," Makinson said.

He enjoyed performing alongside a live band.

"It's very good actually because it means that when we are doing those songs, we can directly interact with the live band as well."

'Better a witty fool than a foolish wit'

Aimee Freeman who played Feste the Fool was transformed into a member of the university's iconic Sextet.

While they were very different time periods, she said they worked well when merged together in the play.

"Brent actually took us through a very interesting process where he had us translate the script into plain english or what we thought it was saying and that's really helped us or it's really helped me at least to be able to talk the Bard's words as like how they should be intended," she said.

The Twelfth Night starts this week at The Globe in Dunedin and runs until 7 December.

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