In Bard on the Beach's Twelfth Night, Dawn Petten puts a new female spin on Malvolio
In a circus-carnival kingdom, a Vancouver actor known for her comedic chops reinvents one of Shakespeare’s most hilariously humourless characters
Dawn Petten’s Malvolia learns how to express herself in Twelfth Night. Photo by Tim Matheson
Bard on the Beach presents Twelfth Night at the BMO Mainstage in Vanier Park to September 21
MALVOLIO IS ONE OF the best-known characters in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night—and arguably the biggest twit in the Bard’s entire canon. His name means “ill will”, and as a pompous, humourless head servant, he draws the ire—and revenge—of Olivia’s household. Famously, there are humiliating yellow stockings involved.
Amid a new production that turns Twelfth Night’s quasi-fictitious kingdom of Illyria into a raucous carnival-dreamscape at Bard on the Beach this summer, actor Dawn Petten is preparing to put a new, female spin on the iconic character.
Meet Malvolia.
“When they asked me to play the part, I was gobsmacked,” the beloved Bard and East Van Panto veteran admits in a phone interview with Stir. “And I realized, because I've just seen amazing male actors play it—at Bard, I've seen Andrew Wheeler, I've seen David Marr, I've seen Allan Zinyk—so the part had never even been in my consciousness as a possibility, as someone I could or ever would play or ever even desire to play, because I had just seen it as so male.”
Reimagining the character as a woman has opened new dimensions to the role, in this, Petten’s first return to the Vanier Park tents in seven years. In the contemporary setting of Twelfth Night, adapted and directed by Diana Donnelly, Malvolia is a stage manager–personal assistant to circus star Olivia—whom she secretly pines for.
“I think of myself as much higher up than the other assistants,” Petten explains. “And what's special about this is, being a person who identifies as female playing Malvolia, is how that speaks to Olivia and Malvolia’s relationship. I get to have a more intimate relationship with Olivia; I can be more in her inner circle, I can be more of a confidante sharing her dressing room with her, helping her get ready in a way we may not see in a version where it's the older male keeper of the house.”
What Petten will not do is play the character as a straight-up villain—in fact, she says she never approaches a character that way (presumably even such East Van Panto baddies as Ursula the octopus in The Little Mermaid).
“I guess I just think in terms of humans, and why they act the way they do, and what their story is,” she begins. “And Malvolia: she's awfully bullied, and tricked, and treated abominably.
“Sometimes when we meet those people in our lives who act superior, who think they're smarter and better than anyone else—I think we all have that very human instinct to want to take them down a notch and want to humble them,” she continues. “But here, the way that the other characters do it, they take her down so much that it is devastating to the character. And you know, Shakespeare doesn’t give us a tidy ending of what that means for Malvolia going forward, to be humiliated in such a drastic way.”
In other words, that humiliation goes far deeper than the outrageous yellow stockings the characters persuade Malvolia to wear in a fake letter from her beloved: “Remember who commended thy yellow stockings and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered.” (The prank is that, in reality, Olivia abhors the style.)
What Petten is getting at is that while Twelfth Night is celebrated as a comedy, from the beginning, it is tinged with tragedy. From the outset, Olivia is mourning the recent loss of her father and brother.
“These characters are repressing themselves, and repressing their identities—and that’s certainly true for Malvolia,” Petten observes. “The play is asking, ‘Who do I want to be? How do I want to live?’ And I think that is what all the characters are sort of wrestling with and trying to figure out.
“Yellow stockings on her become like an embodiment of her repressed sexuality,” the energized actor continues. “It becomes my sort of coming-out outfit. I am just really coming into myself, in a nonrepressed way—stepping into my identity, stepping into my sense of self, and sexuality and love and desire, where I have restricted and repressed so strongly. So I feel like that gives some more juice to the story in a new way. And it’s very fun for me to play!”
For those who have seen the effervescent, physically comedic Petten take on other roles, expressing what she dubs the “Debbie Downer” side to Malvolia definitely plays against type.
“And it has to be in sharp contrast to the fun and the drinking and the playing that the other characters are doing that I really frown on,” she explains, and then adds with a laugh: “I'm still finding, you know, how harsh I can be, how unfunny I can be. And maybe that's funny!”
So it’s a challenge, but what she’s found enormously inspiring is the rich, music-filled, circus-inspired visual world of this production, including her over-the-top costumes, with local songstress Veda Hille’s original score adding to the vibe.
“It's just so magical when you go into the tent,” Petten marvels. “You are transported into all those feelings we have as a child going into the the magic of a carnival land. Illyria becomes this kind of a world of show, of performance, of magic and games of chance, and of hope and love.” 
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