Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is rich with poetry and music. It begins with the famous quote, “if music be the food of love, play on,” and ends with Feste’s song, “For the Rain it Raineth Everyday.” This production of Twelfth Night was set in a Peter Max painting.

In our initial conversations via email, director Nancy Carlin asked me to compose music and sound in a style inspired by the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Carlin described her Twelfth Night in an email to me this way, “Illyria is Pepperland, where musical, happy, colorful people have been under the spell of ‘Blue Meanies,’ creating a sense of sadness, misery, and jealousy. Viola and Sebastian show up on this island and eventually bring love and togetherness. In the overture, we see Viola and Sebastian playing bass and viola together before they are separated by the shipwreck. Viola plays a Se‘bass’tian and Sebastian plays a ‘viola.’ Viola washes up on shore with what looks like a body bag but it really is a large acoustic bass she eventually uses to accompany herself singing ‘Come Away Death.’ In contrast, Sebastian walks around the island carrying a viola in a case.”

The director also requested that I create themes for each character in the play. Olivia would be represented with strings, Orsino with brass, Toby Belch and Sir Aguecheek would be “hip” and "plugged-in," Feste would carry a Sergeant Pepper’s inspired bass drum, Viola would play bass, and Sebastian would play viola. Cartoonish, two-dimensional cutouts of musical instruments would be used to mime performing the music. In contrast to all this music-making, Malvolio would hate all noise and music.

Her email description ended in this way, “Imagine that the arrival of musical siblings thawed the hearts and minds of those they met. Imagine if they inspired the residents to ‘turn off what is sour, turn into a flower, and bloom, bloom, bloom.’ If all these things were true, then Twelfth Night just might inspire us all to sing along, ‘Love is all you need!’ And ‘if music be the food of love, play on!’”