Twelfth Night

Synopsis

Or What You Will. Shakespeare comedy of mistaken identity, practical jokes and unrequited love. Rescued from a shipwreck the twins Viola and Sebastian arrive independently in Illyria, both thinking the other is drowned. Viola disguises herself as a boy and finds employment with the Duke who is in love with Olivia. Malvolio is the subject of a cruel joke played on him by Sir Toby Belch (yellow stockings cross-gartered) leading him to believe that Olivia loves him. But Olivia has fallen in love with the disguised Viola, while she is in love with the Duke (following it so far?!).

Our Review:

23 July 2007

There's a pall of melancholy that hangs over Twelfth Night, according to director Philip Franks' programme notes. He's chosen to set the production in the years following the First World War, a time when bereavement permeated all strands of society.

It was also the era, of course, that led to the jazz age and new standards in sexual liberation. And that's appropriate too, for while Franks' production is more melancholic than most that I've seen, there's an underlying sexuality as well.

In particular, Kate Fleetwood's Olivia is a woman achieving a new sense of liberation as she slowly realises that she's falling in love with Cesario/Viola. She captures the conflict between her duties to her dead brother and her emerging desires – it’s desire that wins out. One gets the impression at the end that she cares little whether she ends up with Viola or her male counterpart.

Fleetwood is well matched by Laura Rees' Viola, another character m...

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