Gender Comedy: A Less Stupid Twelfth Night Gay Fantasia

Admit it: Shakespeare’s comedies are stupid. At least, that’s what Harry Slack’s silly and sublime new play posits, gleefully pointing out the Bard’s many logic lapses in Twelfth Night. Any time one of Shakespeare’s women disguises herself as a man is ridiculous, but when she’s played by Lavinia Loveless, actor Josh Hitchens’ pink-haired drag alter ego, we’re really in weird territory. Shakespeare’s Toby Belch becomes Toby Fart (played by Slack), men wear dresses or no trousers, and, at first, the play feels like a scatological skit, like shooting comedic fish in a barrel. Then a barrel of fish actually appears — for a wild, wonderful “fish fight” — along with robots, cardboard cutouts named “Jeremy” and surprisingly deep musings about the nature and purpose of language. Slack seems inspired not only by the Shakespeare he playfully skewers (no advance knowledge necessary — it’s all explained), but by absurdists Tom Stoppard, Paul Magritte and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. While most characters resemble their Twelfth Night counterparts, Lesley Berkowitz’s brooding philosopher Andy merges As You Like It’s dour Jaques and a Samuel Beckett refugee, repeatedly and hilariously undercutting the manic goofiness with misanthropic observations. Director Paul Kuhn keeps the action popping on his festively colorful set, orchestrating the build of Slack’s blazing 90-minute script (with a 10-second intermission!) to a crescendo of gender confusion as boys-playing-girls-playing boys sort out who loves whom and why — though, really, why not?  

Through Jan. 4, $20-$25, Calvary Center, 4740 Baltimore Ave., 215-525-1350, curiotheatre.org.