Saucy Sir Toby Belch (right, Adriana Lima) confronts the prim Malvolio (center, Doutzen Kroes), who has come to scold him for partying too hard. "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" "Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth, too!" answers the capering Fool (left, Alessandra Ambrosio).

Viola (left, Karlie Kloss), revealed at last to be a woman and not a man, embraces her beloved Orsino (right, Erin Heatherton).

"It's common knowledge that in Shakespeare's time, even the women's roles were played by men," says Old Globe artistic director Bart Delistein. "It's 2015. Frankly, we feel it's high time the ladies got a little bit of payback. And what could be a more appropriate group of ladies to honor the work of a great English playwright on a stage named after a great English playhouse than the Victoria's Secret Angels, named as they are after a great English queen? Brand-wise, it's pure synergy. And what better play to perform than Twelfth Night, which features a famous example of gendermorphing in the character of Viola, who must pose as a man, and who falls in love with another man even as a woman falls in love with the man she is pretending to be?"

Malvolio (Duetzen Kroes) romances Olivia (Rihanna), mistakenly supposing that he has dressed in the manner she requested. "Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee cross-gartered."

The Angels' relative lack of experience isn't really a problem, says Delistein. "For one thing, most of them have been performing on stages all over the world for the better part of their careers. Or maybe you've never tuned in to the nationally televised Victoria's Secret Fashion Show? For another, I think we as a culture have gotten over this whole notion that it's all about The Actor expressing herself. The actor on the stage is just one part of the whole play, and the play's the thing, to crib a line from The Bard. These days, we understand that any performance, be it musical, cinematic, or theatrical, is a hugely collaborative effort. We don't expect directors to be actors. That's not their job. Why should we expect the people we're looking at on the stage to actually say the lines the characters speak? We might as well ask them to make their own costumes. This way, we're free to hire voice actors who can really deliver the goods, regardless of how physically appropriate they might be for a given part. And we can leave the physical appropriateness to the Angels, who are very appropriate." Delistein says that the Angels have done extensive work with lip sync coaches.

Delistein notes that the show's run is entirely sold out, with some tickets going for as much as $1000 on secondary-market websites. But he is quick to note that the decision to partner with the Angels was artistically motivated, and not some kind of base commercial gimmick. "That sort of reasoning is as flimsy as some of the Angels' outfits," he scoffs. "And while I know I joked about payback, this is much more about revealing something to the Old Globe's audience. It's an attempt to give a familiar play some new wrinkles. Well, not wrinkles, but you know what I mean."