Putting ‘Twelfth Night’ Under a Carnival Spell : Stage: After a research trip to Cuba, director David Chambers splashes Santeria and West African drums onto Shakespeare’s mythical shipwreck tale.

COSTA MESA —  Various plays in the Shakespeare canon come into vogue or fall out of fashion with the season, but some--such as “Twelfth Night, or, What You Will,” which opens Friday at South Coast Repertory--seem to offer perennial invitations to directors with splashy ideas.

Take the upcoming version by SCR’s David Chambers, who even went to Cuba to research for his Caribbean variation of the play.

Not content with staging a mere tale of shipwrecked twins and star-crossed lovers in the mythical land of Illyria, Chambers wanted to put the spell of carnival on “Twelfth Night,” while also underscoring the play’s subtext about aristocratic decadence, class status and a society in paralysis.

“As someone who teaches Shakespeare in a contemporary world, I have to wrestle with The Shakespeare Problem,” said Chambers, an SCR associate artist who doubles as a professor at the Yale School of Drama. “The poetry is majestic, one of the strongest legacies of the Eurocentric tradition, but it can also be an oppressive instrument. . . . I want to see how I can elasticize it in other cultural directions without ripping apart the text.”

Oddly, Chambers had never been to any of the carnival festivals that dot the Caribbean each spring, usually during Lent. “I’d only read about them,” he said. “I was a virgin in these matters.”

So, because it was already summer when “Twelfth Night” came up for discussion with SCR’s producing artistic director, David Emmes, and because carnival in Santiago de Cuba commences for a week on July 26 (switched to that date by Cuban President Fidel Castro as a national holiday), Emmes agreed to send Chambers to Cuba for some first-hand research.

Ironically, Chambers flew to Santiago de Cuba only to discover that carnival had been suspended last summer to avoid taking attention from the Pan-American Games, which Castro was hosting.

The director got lucky, however. He ran into Judith Bettelheim, a leading authority on Caribbean culture and religion, at one of many Afro-Cuban drumming workshops in the city.

“She tripped over me at one of these things,” Chambers said, “and her English was the first I’d heard in days. I said, ‘Are you Judith Bettelheim?’ I’d read her book on Caribbean festival arts. And she said, ‘Yeah, what are you?’ She thought I was in the CIA. We were the only two Americans around. Anyway, she took me by the hand and walked me through all kinds of stuff.

“One thing she introduced me to--which I had not gone there for--was (the Afro-Cuban religion) Santeria. It’s impossible to be part of carnival and not stumble into religion. What’s so remarkable is that the gods and saints of Santeria equate beautifully with characters in ‘Twelfth Night.’ ”

Consequently, a small measure of Santeria has crept into the production as the religion of the servant class, linking them to both the natural and supernatural worlds in ways not available to the play’s ruling aristocrats except under the spell of carnival--and even then not available to Malvolio, the Puritan steward.

“Shakespeare had his own mythology and his own kind of pantheon,” Chambers said. “Feste the fool equates perfectly with Santeria’s Eleggua. Lots of cultures have a trickster figure like him. Eleggua plays the same role, for example, as the trickster Coyote in Native American mythology.”

Further, Chambers identifies various characters of the play--particularly Maria--with Santeria priests, called Santeros, thus evoking not only a sense of unity between the natural and supernatural worlds but having real effects, such as reconciling characters who’ve been at odds.

For all that, however, Chambers’ multiracial casting and the visual impact of the production are likely to show the more-apparent Caribbean influence.

With SCR’s “Twelfth Night” dominated by the broad strokes of blue and green and yellow in Ralph Funicello’s scenic design--not to mention the pervasive sound of the Djimbe West African drummers--this could be one Shakespearean production to brighten a rainy January.

* “Twelfth Night” previews continue tonight and Thursday at 8 p.m. at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Preview tickets: $15 to $22. The regular run opens Friday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $23 to $32. Information: (714) 957-4033.

BACKGROUND

Two seasons ago, Thomas F. Bradac staged a spare, pocket-sized version of “Twelfth Night” in Garden Grove for the Grove Shakespeare Festival almost as a counterweight to the modish sort of treatment the Bard’s 1601 comedy was getting at other U.S. theater companies. The American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., for example, had just mounted Andrei Serban’s production with its heady mix of Mediterranean costumes and scenic designs ranging from ancient Greece to modern Rome. And the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco was staging Jack Fletcher’s version, which summoned up tropical palm trees, Far East turbans and sarongs. And closer to home, last season at the La Jolla Playhouse, Des McAnuff set his “Twelfth Night” like a madcap comedy at various times in a steam room, on a tennis court and in a Williams-Sonoma kitchen with a suspended refrigerator.