Pocket Play Review: Twelfth Night at the Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse

Author Julie Hammonds is on a quest to complete Shakespeare’s canon in calendar year 2025. In these pocket play reviews, she records brief impressions of each show she sees.

• The Play: Twelfth Night
• The Company: Atlanta Shakespeare Company
• The Stage: Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, “America’s only Original Practice Playhouse”
• Run Dates: April 5–27, 2025
• Memorable for: The verve and spirit with which the company played this comedy, hitting every note.
• The Robert Armin Award for Wise Foolery goes to Andrew Houchins, whose Feste made us laugh, and sigh, and laugh again.

Pocket Play Review: I’ve always wanted to see a show in the Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse. Eat a meal and drink your beverage of choice while watching professional actors present great plays? Of course it’s been on my bucket list!

The playhouse is a wonderful place to see a play. It has a lower level and a balcony. On the lower level, patrons sit at tables along the front of the stage. Balcony seating above the stage extends alongside the stage as well. Cafeteria-style food is served from a separate room at the back, and a full bar stays busy out front.

About 200 patrons can watch a show. It’s intimate, and the actors heighten that effect by speaking directly to the audience and performing in shared light. These and other “Original Practice” methods, part of the company’s DNA, were skillfully deployed in Twelfth Night.

The performances were top notch. This play is a comedy, and the company performed it with verve and spirit. The love triangle at its heart, in which Viola desires Orsino who desires Olivia who desires Viola, was believable and poignant.

There are sad moments in the plot, leavening the comedy. When a puritanical character, the steward Malvolio, gets his comeuppance, it’s an amusing trick. He is then thrown into a dark cell and tormented. That action goes on for longer than is called for by either comedy or kindness. Under the skilled direction of Mary Ruth Ralston, the company didn’t shy away from the story’s melancholic lines. They played the whole range of emotional notes, delivering a satisfyingly rich performance.

In sum: It’s great fun to see a well-acted play after a delicious dinner and a glass of something sweet and strong. Try it sometime!