Twelfth Night: Kristin Wold - Viola; Christianna Nelson - Olivia. Shakespeare and Company, 2000.

Modern productions often exploit female sexuality as much as did Restoration actresses like Nell Gwynn. Olivia is often seen as obsessive in her pursuit of Cesario-Viola, but rarely to this degree. Many productions now imply Orsino's intense interest in his "page" (the cross-dressed Viola) is at least latently homosexual. Jack Belloli writes of modern revisionism's love of pushing situations to extremes via such effects as the male/female twinning in Twelfth Night:

"Shakespeare piercingly explores the embarrassment this brings. While disguised as Cesario, Viola cannot quite believe that Olivia, whom she is courting on behalf of Duke Orsino, has been “charm’d” by her superficial “outside” appearance. Many contemporary productions of the play have taken this embarrassment even further: the ambiguous nature of Antonio’s wish to be “servant” to Viola’s brother Sebastian has been exploited and, in 2002, the RSC’s Olivia could not resist one last kiss from Viola even when revealed as a woman." ("Open Shakespeare": Open Knowledge Foundation Project|(c) All material available under CC Attribution license v3.0)

Image:Photographer: Kevin Sprague. Copyright Shakespeare & Co., courtesy Internet Shakespeare Editions.