Actually, to expand upon that, in terms of effective theatrical staging, implausability is *key* -- specifically, Viola and Sebastian should NOT look exactly alike, or even really alike enough for it to be believable that anyone could mistake one for the other. The thing is, the audience *has* to be able to tell them apart instantly, or the comedy simply doesn't work.
This became really obvious to me when I saw two different productions of Comedy of Errors (which involves two sets of identical twins). In one, the lead twins were played by actual identical twins. In the other, the servant twins were played by people who looked almost exactly alike. In the first, the jokes about the leads didn't work. In the second, the jokes about the servants didn't work. It was all much, much funnier to the audience when the twins didn't really resemble one another. If you can't immediately tell that the other characters are addressing the wrong twin, it's just not funny.
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Date: 2006-04-09 06:30 pm (UTC)This became really obvious to me when I saw two different productions of Comedy of Errors (which involves two sets of identical twins). In one, the lead twins were played by actual identical twins. In the other, the servant twins were played by people who looked almost exactly alike. In the first, the jokes about the leads didn't work. In the second, the jokes about the servants didn't work. It was all much, much funnier to the audience when the twins didn't really resemble one another. If you can't immediately tell that the other characters are addressing the wrong twin, it's just not funny.