By Robert Avila

Photo by Wendy K. Yalom Hugs, not drugs: Olivia (Lindsay Anderson, front) and Viola (Csilla Horvath) share affection in What You Will.

Director Rod Hipskind's truncated title, What You Will, already points to a unique angle on Shakespeare's zany, somewhat sinister comedy. His vision rides the play's strong undercurrent of contingency, chaos, and sexual ambiguity (all of that and more folded into the original subtitle) to a logical extreme. This includes compounding the play's gender confusion by casting women in two traditionally male roles – the jaded fool Feste (played as female by Davina Cohen), and loudmouth souse Sir Toby Belch (played in male drag by Parker Leventer). There's also a notable amount of improvisation incorporated into an otherwise sharply choreographed representation of volatile desire.

The play's intertwining narratives pivot on the story of shipwrecked twin siblings Sebastian (Ryan O'Donnell) and Viola (Csilla Horvath). Separated during a storm at sea, they wind up entangled in the lovesick stratagems and mischievous schemes of Illyria's fairly demented coastal kingdom. Disguised as a man, Viola works as a go-between for Duke Orsino (Randall Cohn), with whom she's secretly fallen in love, as he woos the spurning Olivia (Lindsay Anderson). Olivia, meanwhile, supposedly mourning her brother and father, immediately falls for Viola in the form of the duke's boyish but charming messenger.

As the actors warm up their characters, a shouted cue starts the action. "If music be the food of love, play on," it commands to the lovesick Orsino. "Give me excess of it." The Duke of Illyria pines for Lady Olivia, but seems more in love with love than anything else, even admitting in his opening lines that "so full of shapes is fancy."

This theme – the arbitrariness in love – propels some of the best comedic moments, especially Anderson's brilliant 180-degree about-face from a somber and serious Olivia to a hilariously bent image of unhinged amorousness directed at the hapless Viola (played with earnest intelligence and equal finesse by Horvath). Later, the same theme finds a clever outlet in an improvised song. Sung by a chorus directed (naturally) by Orsino, this cheeky flight of pointed nonsense is not a bad contrast to the excellent songs Shakespeare has Feste sing elsewhere. Lust has its own autonomy, meanwhile, and Hipskind's staging underscores the point in some raunchy passing sexual play between Orsino and Feste.

Desire spawns violence as well. Olivia's rowdy kinsman Sir Toby and his gallant but addle-headed sidekick Sir Andrew Aguecheek (nicely played by Brian Livingston) find their revels interrupted by Olivia's steward, Malvolio (Kunal Pasad, offering not-quite-over-the-top comical effeteness). With the guidance of chambermaid Maria (Mia Rovegno), they plot to unseat the prudish and inflated bore by means of a forged love letter, seemingly from Lady Olivia. Malvolio, upon making an extraordinary ass of himself in what is one of the funnier scenes, is taken for insane and locked in a miserably dark room. More or less above the fray is Olivia's jaded jester, Feste, a lightning-witted fool and probably the only really sane character in the play.

At its best, What You Will beautifully meshes the sublime poetry and comedy of the text with bold staging and ebullient but precise performances that draw on the stylized physical theater foolsFURY has used to great effect. When the ensemble comes together in a kind of scrum to re-create the ship and the shipwreck that separate Sebastian and Viola, for example, the play's action and themes unite impressively with the mise-en-scène in a single, original image. On the other hand, the mirth and violence represented onstage sometimes seem a bit hollow. Proving only, I guess, that you can't always get what you will.

'What You Will' runs through July 16. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Mon/11, 8 p.m. Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida, SF. $12-$30. 1-866-GOT-FURY.