Over the past 30 years Kathleen Marshall has worked on 19 Broadway musicals and plays, including winning three Tony Awards for her choreography.

But it was a call seven years ago from San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre that offered Marshall an unexpected and much-welcomed turning point in her career. Globe artistic director Barry Edelstein offered Marshall the opportunity to direct William Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labor’s Lost” on the Globe’s outdoor stage in 2016.

“I will be forever grateful that Barry took a chance on me,” Marshall said. “I’d done musicals based on Shakespeare and I was an English lit major in college and I knew Shakespearean text, but I’d never put one his plays up on its feet. It was both exciting and terrifying.”

Fortunately, the production was a hit, and two years later Edelstein invited Marshall back to direct the Bard’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” which was another big success. Marshall has returned this spring for the third time to direct one of her favorite Shakespeare plays, “Twelfth Night,” which opens tonight at the Globe’s outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre.

Marshall said she has found that directing Shakespeare plays is similar to directing musicals, in that there are lots of characters, multiple plot lines and scenes, physical humor, songs, dancing and quick transitions between scenes.

“What’s amazing is that there is a musicality to Shakespeare. Working on the scenes is like scoring music. You have to find the pace, the rhythm, how it ebbs and flows, and so much of that is the poetry and storytelling,” she said.

Naian González Norvind plays Viola and Cesario in the Old Globe’s “Twelfth Night.”

(Courtesy of the Old Globe)

Set on the Illyrian seacoast, “Twelfth Night” is the story of young adult twins Viola and Sebastian who become separated in a shipwreck and each presumes the other dead. Viola disguises herself as the boy page Cesario and is tasked by the Illyrian Duke Orsino to woo the Countess Olivia in his stead. Instead, Olivia falls in love with Cesario and Viola is secretly in love with Orsino. Then Sebastian turns up alive, looking identical to his disguised twin sister, causing more romantic confusion.

Marshall has set her “Twelfth Night” in something like the Regency era because “it was a looser time that didn’t have the stiff formality of the baroque period before it or the Victorian period after it. There’s a fluidity and elegance about it, but it’s relaxed.” An original score is being composed for the show by Miriam Sturm and Michael Bodeen, who collaborated on the Globe’s “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” earlier this year.

Marshall said she loves “Twelfth Night” for its characters.

Biko Eisen-Martin plays Duke Orsino in the Old Globe’s “Twelfth Night.”

(Courtesy of the Old Globe)

“They are all searching for something,” she said. “They’re lost in some way and they have a void they’re trying to fill. They’re trying to fight their way to their joy and sunshine. There are delightful comic moments, but also real genuine emotion with these characters longing for something they don’t have.”

Edelstein said he loves the work that Marshall has done at the Globe, creating what he calls “beautifully upholstered productions” that possess “an elegance and a beautiful sense of wit.”

Starring in the production as Duke Orsino is Biko Eisen-Martin, who recently played Olympic sprinter John Carlos in the Globe’s “The XIXth (The Nineteenth).” Viola/Cesario is played by Naian González Norvind of NBC’s “Amsterdam”; Olivia is played by Medina Senghore of SYFY network’s “Happy”; and Sebastian is played by San Diego actor Jose Balistrieri. Playing Malvolio, Olivia’s pompous steward, is Greg Germann, of Fox’s “Ally McBeal.”

After finishing up “Twelfth Night,” Marshall will focus her directorial energies on her next big project, a new bio-musical about Frank Sinatra in his younger recording years. It’s being produced by the Universal Music Group with the cooperation of Sinatra’s daughter, Tina, and will premiere in October in Birmingham, England.

“He’s such a cultural icon, but most people don’t know this part of his story. He had his ups and downs and at one point was seen as washed up. It’s really a story of perseverance and finding his artistry,” she said.

“Twelfth Night” is the first of two Shakespeare plays on the Globe’s festival stage this summer. Still to come July 30 through Sept. 3 is “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” directed by Old Globe resident artist James Vásquez. Edelstein said Vásquez is setting the play in the 1950s America world of “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners” because the play is a sendup of Elizabethan suburban bourgeois mores.

‘Twelfth Night’

When: Opens tonight and runs through July 9. Showtimes, 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays and July 3 (no performances June 17 or July 4)

Where: Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego

Tickets: $29 and up

Phone: (619) 234-5623

Online: theoldglobe.org