‘Twelfth Night’ has taken over Philly theaters this season. But why?

If you looked at Philly theater lineups in May and June, you may have noticed one play in common: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, presented by three professional theaters (plus a student production from REV Theatre at Laurel Hill). Ryan Walter directed a production at Allens Lane Art Center that ended June 4; Charles McMahon’s show at Lantern Theater ends June 18; and the Wilma Theater’s Yury Urnov directs a beachy version running through June 25.

How did this play take over Philly stages? The gender-bending romantic comedy follows a twin disguised as her brother as she falls in love with a duke and ends up in a messy tangle of relationships. We asked three directors why it’s so popular.

These answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Yury Urnov: Maybe it’s about the play’s vitality. There was so much death around in the past few years that we all suddenly want to live more than ever? We want to be together and celebrate our humanity, our need for love, and our miraculous ability to be SO silly in our passions?

Ryan Walter: These characters have lost their entire previous life and must figure out how to build a new life in order to survive. And out of that loss and pain they find rapture and deep joy by falling in love and reinventing themselves, surprising themselves. Out of Shakespearean’s plays, this one felt so immediately relatable and welcoming to our current moment in time.

Urnov: I haven’t! Will do my best to! The iconic one for me is this small-scale student production from 1990, which (I believe) no American has ever seen; it was done in Moscow’s GITIS theater school. That group of amazing young actors showed me that a Shakespearian play could still be relevant both emotionally and philosophically centuries after it was written. There was almost no design and minimal costumes … they made the play their own, and by that, made it dear, valuable, and personal for me.

Charles McMahon: I plan to see the Wilma’s production after the Lantern’s run ends. I directed Twelfth Night at the Lantern 24 years ago and discovered a great deal by the end of that creative process. Within a few years I started to think about [doing] it again. We [simplified] this production, trusting the story and the characters more and not cluttering it up with too much theorizing.

Walter: I don’t believe in comparing and contrasting. Our production was the first of the four to open, so we really went our own way. I am very interested in seeing the Wilma [play]. It sounds very exciting and in a similar spirit.

Urnov: In our production, MK Tuomanen plays both twins Sebastian and Viola, and I think they do it masterfully. This choice moved us towards exploring gender fluidity and polyamory. I believe a theatrical experiment can help us see through the lens of human empathy [and] learn from experiencing [these identities] emotionally, personally.

McMahon: There certainly seems to be a rather absurd and harmful movement in today’s politics that seeks to put people into well-defined boxes and to police their conformity. This is a recipe for unhappiness, one of the [play’s] themes. The [play] is not so much about “drag,” a unique and specific art form, as it is about disguise. Shakespeare often creates an ironic situation where a character [expresses] a deeper truth by hiding who they are. In modern drag performances there is no attempt to hide.

Walter: Many people forget Shakespeare’s great subtitle for this play: What You Will. That’s part of the message — whoever you are, whoever you love, that is natural and [should] be celebrated. There is so much queer erotism and love and the characters embrace it. Orsino falls head over heels in love with Cesario ― he says so in the text. And Viola, as Cesario, notably never appears in “womanly attire” at the end. Viola/Cesario finds freedom and joyous liberation in being a man, and Shakespeare celebrates that choice. This play was centuries ahead of us, I think, unfortunately.

Urnov: We are setting our piece in a contemporary beach resort town and finding modern identities for the characters. We also went in a different direction with the music: composer Michael Kiley was inspired by disco, house, and EDM, which keeps it fun, and is also a nod to the queerness we’re embracing.

McMahon: The Lantern’s production is true to about 95% of the original text. Some of the more obscure 400-year-old jokes did not make the final cut.

Walter: This production both marked the 70th anniversary of Allens Lane Art Center as well as the return of its Café Theater [which closed in] March 2020. We had the audience create the sounds of the storm. And [we] used the entire theater — the stage, both sides of the house, behind the audience, the aisle between the audience, and even the tech booth was a playing space. The show ended in a dance party.

Urnov: The Wilma one! I believe it falls under the definition of pop.

McMahon: I confess that I haven’t seen that one, but now I will. My favorite was the Globe Theatre production that came to New York in 2013. [The] staging was remarkably simple and uncluttered … As a director, my most important lesson sometimes is to get out of the way, then something wonderful can happen.

Walter: My god, I haven’t seen that movie since it first came out! But as I can’t argue there is a better adaptation in pop culture, I’ll agree with you!

“Twelfth Night” runs at Lantern Theater Co. (923 Ludlow St., Phila.) through June 18: “Twelfth Night” runs at the Wilma Theater (265 S. Broad St., Phila.) through June 25.