This sassy American jazz musical relocates Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to Harlem’s Cotton Club in the 1940s and sets it to the irresistible songs of Duke Ellington.
The story is simplified to remove several levels of confusion – the identical brother of heroine Viola and other characters are written out – and some of its cruelty is softened. The sense of carnivalesque revelry undercut by romantic yearning remains.
