Arguably Shakespeare’s most musical play, “Twelfth Night” features the shenanigan-heavy plot of twins separated in a shipwreck, complete with a genderbending love triangle.
This year, Off Square Theatre Company’s rendition transports the audience to a mid-20th century resort with a tight jazz band led by Jackson native and pianist Clay Humphrey.
Spoiler alert for the 400-year-old classic, also retold in the 2006 rom com, “She’s the Man”: it’s a comedy.
The Thin Air Shakespeare show opened July 11 and runs July 17-20 on the Center for the Arts lawn. (KHOL is a season sponsor of the show).
The six-member band pays homage to lyrics Shakespeare wrote within the world of the play, Humphrey said, without taking people out of the modern genre. Drums, upright bass, trumpet and two vocalists join Humphrey in jazz standards and crooner ballads.
“It sounds exactly like a lounge jazz band, as far as I’m concerned,” Humphrey said.
Director Edgar Landa settled on a bright, multicolored set he said takes visual inspiration from the animated series “The Jetsons,” American artist Josh Agle, better known as Shag and Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian.
“From that, the designer brought some ideas of atomic architecture,” Landa said. “[It’s] very hip and very bright.”
He noted that Humphrey stepped it up a notch this year by writing an original closing tune.
After trying to play the matching game with standards, Humphrey felt most love songs were too “forlorn.”
“Not that any other song couldn’t have done that,” he said, “but I wanted it to be just right.”
