Master of the Revels - An Elizabethan Interlude

Murdoch University Students Show How Shakespeare Should Be Done with new Production of Master of the Revels. Perth, Western Australia. Wednesday 11th - Saturday 14th November. Shakespeare fever has hit Murdoch University with the new creation from the minds of Associate Professor Jenny de Reuck, Melissa Merchant, and Andrew Kocsis. Master of the Revels is a rare combination of theoretical questions, an inspiring history lesson, and the Shakespearean comedy, Twelfth Night. The curtain will go up in Nexus Theatre, Murdoch University, on Wednesday 11th November and will run until the following Saturday evening, with daytime shows on Thursday 12th and Friday 13th November. Tickets cost $10 per person and can be booked prior to the season or bought at the door. This production may have begun as a student assignment, individually graded by the tutors of the unit, but it has developed into a project full of fun and entertainment. The result is a witty, charming, and often hilarious adaptation of a Shakespearean classic. Master of the Revels is ultimately a condensed version of Twelfth Night where, in the kingdom of Illyria, a story of love (both of a passionate and unrequited nature), festivity, trickery, and masquerade proves to be a recipe for amusement and laughter. However, what makes Master of the Revels unique is that the play, Twelfth Night, is presented in conjunction with a dramatized ‘lesson’ on Elizabethan theatre as a company of actors develops its production of Shakespearean classic for performance. In the words of the director, Jenny de Reuck, “Shakespeare can be difficult for young audiences to appreciate but by highlighting the comedy in this play and by providing information about the world in which the drama was written, Master of the Revels is genuinely educational as well as entertaining”. The audience is introduced to key aspects of Shakespeare’s comedies, the context in which he wrote, and also to some of the controversial debates that have informed the Shakespearean canon for the last 400 years.