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:

14 December 2005

After seeing some disappointing productions of this sparkling play, it’s good to see the RSC return to London bringing a Twelfth Night that hits the spot. Michael Boyd’s production adorns the newly refurbished and renamed Novello (formerly the Strand) and provides a promising opening to the season.

Too often in recent years, directors have seemed to have downplayed the comedy; but Boyd succeeds in combining some of the darker aspects of the play with the madcap playing. This is a production that revolves around the excellent Feste of Forbes Masson: particularly in his relationship with Maria. Masson dominates the production: right from start singing a discordant blues to accompany Orsino’s grieving, to the final heartfelt coda.

These two, with Toby Belch, create a triangle that mirrors that of the main protagonists. But Masson’s love-struck Feste gives us an Illyrian Pagliaccio, unable to bear Maria’s transfer of affection to the greater social standing afforded by a un...

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Latest User Review

194.75.129.200) - 7 November 2005:

When Twelfth Night was written, that occasion marked the end of a winter festival beginning on All Hallows Eve. During Twelfth Night festivities the normal order of things was reversed and nothing was quite what it seemed. The play is usually classed as a "straight" (rather than farcical) comedy, but its world is a topsy-turvy one, ideally suited to the type of entertainment for which it was intended but not often brought out in performance, since it is usually given a specific temporal and locational context (even, on one RSC occasion, Shakespeare's own Stratford). But Michael Boyd's wonderful version (itself for the RSC and seen at Stratford) truly reflects the play's origins, revealing (and revelling in) all the illusions and delusions affecting its principal characters, and setting the whole in an unusually sophisticated (but still suitably topsy-turvy) context which works superbly. No attempt is made to create a realistic Illyria. The action happens in designer Tom Piper's version of a "wooden O", a circular stage bounded by a semi-circular wall containing several doorways and decorated with a large pair of (female) eyes. On stage initially are the music stands and instruments of Orsino's orchestra, but after the opening scene these are raised up on ropes to hang from the flies for the rest of the performance. And the score itself is jazz-like, and the costumes modern; a setting light years away from the play's original production, but one which illustrates Shakespeare's magnificent timelessness. Here we encounter an Orsino (Barnaby Kay) who seems to worship Olivia from afar but whose sexual proclivities are uncertain, given his reaction to Kananu Kirimi's far from shrinking Viola, whose own enthusiasm for her male disguise is more commonly encountered in Rosalind. Olivia (Aislin McGuckin) wears severe black, which initially seems to reflect her actual character as well as her state of mourning, but her true nature is revealed by her enthusiastic reaction to "Cesario", and her acceptance of Sebastian in "his" stead. Even Richard Cordery's wonderful Malvolio has hidden depths, being a martial arts enthusiast and a biker in his spare time! And it is Malvolio, and the other inhabitants of the subplot, who most engage our emotions here, for a happy ending for the main plot characters is never in doubt. But Malvolio's punishment, played out not in a dark dungeon but in the full glare of the stage lights, is a cruel one, whilst John Mackay's Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who is apparently a frustrated ballet-dancer, is devastated as well as disillusioned when his "friend" Sir Toby's rejects him. And most moving of all is the fate of Forbes Masson's superb Feste, who is at one point kissed passionately by Meg Fraser's Maria but whom she ultimately abandons for Sir Toby. It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that it is Feste who sings (quite beautifully, for Forbes Masson has a fine voice) the play's sad, haunting, final song as "rain" - reams of sheet music from the stands above - flutters down from the flies. ...

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