In William Shakespeare's time, female roles were played on stage by boys.
Heather Fairbairn, who directed Bell Shakespeare's new production of Twelfth Night, has taken that gender swap even further: men play women, women play men, and at times there's confusion as to which is which.
And one actor is non-binary as is their character, adding to the mix.
"One of the things I wanted was to draw out the original exploration of gender and sexuality," Fairbairn said.
"Viola would be played by a male actor dressing up as Viola dressed up as a pageboy.
"It becomes so convoluted, challenging the traditional genders - there are almost too many layers."
To set up the concept, Viola is played by Isabel Burton in the first scene but thereafter Alfie Gledhill takes the role for the rest of the play.
Having been shipwrecked on Ilyria and, believing her twin Sebastian (Burton) to be dead, Viola disguises herself as a male named Cesario and becomes a page at the male-dominated court of Duke Orsino (Garth Holcombe).
Viola falls in love with Orsino who loves the wealthy Olivia (Ursula Mills).
However, Olivia is mourning the death of her brother and refuses all offers of romance.
Unwilling to be spurned, Orsino sends "Cesario" to woo Olivia as an intermediary - and Olivia falls in love with the page.
"We're embracing a multiplicity of romantic identities - everyone is represented," Fairburn said.
The result is "a celebration of love in all its forms".
As if that weren't complicated enough, a subplot has Olivia's prudish housekeeper Malvolia (Jane Montgomery Griffiths) the victim of an elaborate prank by Toby Belch (Keith Agius) and Andrew Aguecheek (Mike Howlett).
Traversing both courts is the jester Feste (Tomas Kantor) who sings many of the songs composed by ARIA-Award winning composer Sarah Blasko.
The composer worked closely with Fairburn to create a sense of melancholy throughout the play and with Kantor to write specifically for their voice.
In adapting the script Fairburn gave Feste some of the words and actions of minor characters who had to be omitted to meet the exigencies of a touring production.
Twelfth Night celebrates the 400th anniversary in 2023. It is among Shakespeare's most performed works.
Fairburn said, "The play is encouraging us all to live in the moment and embrace the fleeting nature of life."
This is underlined by the use of plants on stage to form a garden, which ties in both to the idea of a cycle of life and death and to the text.
"There's a lot of nature imagery in the work," Fairburn said.
The director was also struck by the "genre-defying nature" of Twelfth Night: it contains comedy, drama and romance present with a vein of darkness running through them all.
Fairburn said the full title, Twelfth Night or What You Will and the first word of the play, "if," introduced an atmosphere of uncertainty and equivocation from the outset.
There are also a lot of questions left unanswered by the end of the play.
But that's life as well as art.
Twelfth Night is on at the Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre on October 13 to 21, various dates and times. See: canberratheatrecentre.com.au
