Twelfth Night Reviews

Whatsonstage

The programme’s pronouncement “our production of Twelfth Night is set at a seaside resort” might make the Shakespeare-purist head straight back to Queensway tube station, but this rumbustious, laugh-out-loud, cross-dressing romp, in the glorious surroundings of Kensington Palace Gardens, is terrific entertainment.
Twelfth Night follows the tale of Viola and twin brother Sebastian, who are washed up on the shores of Ilyrria after being shipwrecked, each unaware that the other survived. Viola, disguised as a servant boy, enters the service of Orsino, ruler of Ilyrria, where she has to woo the lady Olivia on her master’s behalf. But Olivia is also the object of soppy Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s and uptight Malvolio’s affections. Long plot short, Olivia falls for Cesario/Viola, Viola falls for Orsino, while Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch, her maidservant, Maria, and jester Feste stir the pot. Then Sebastian turns up - and Olivia thinks he’s Cesario. It all ends happily, of course, but not before the unfortunate Malvolio has been hilariously humiliated and the interfering trio named and shamed.
Shakespeare’s original always needs some editing to make it coherent and director Bill Bankes-Jones has chosen exactly the right bits to chop to bring clarity to an otherwise annoyingly complicated tale.
Why are they by the seaside? A modern setting of Shakespeare can often simply be a gimmick - there’s no real point to it. Here though the seaside backdrop is cleverly entwined into the action, almost becoming a character in its own right. So there’s a Punch and Judy booth providing the puppet-police officers who arrest Antonio, himself an Avenue Q-esque puppet. A beach hut becomes Malvolio’s place of confinement. A surfboard acts as gift to Olivia and a love letter. And throughout there are subtle - and not so subtle - nods to popular culture which Shakespeare would have loved as much as the first-night audience did.
The costuming, in keeping with the setting, is mostly contemporary, so it feels oddly anachronistic for Viola and Sebastian to be togged out in Elizabethan doublet and hose. A link to the original maybe, but androgynous jeans, tee-shirts and baseball caps might have been a fun alternative.
That’s just a minor niggle though. The Oxford Shakespeare Company’s talented cast are uniformly excellent, energetic and engaging, delivering Shakespeare’s verse as well as Nick Lloyd Webber’s terrific score to perfection.
A real fun summer treat - one not to be missed.
-Carole Gordon

The Stage

This fresh, feisty, pared down and highly entertaining version of Shakespeare’s comic masterpiece, shot through with silvery sadness, owes much of its success to the inspirational fifties seaside setting and the leafy marvels of Kensington Gardens, complete with owls hooting at dusk.

All nine cast members are strong but special plaudits should go to Kirsty Yates - standing in for an indisposed actor as Viola, despite her own recently broken leg. Her wistful boyishness and yearning for Chris Heyward’s (sexually ambiguous?) Orsino are spot-on. And her verse speaking is very fine.

Dafydd Gwyn Howells gives us a charismatic and attractive Sir Toby rather than the usual seedy drunken sot, so that you can actually see why the deliciously naughty and sexy Maria, played by Katy Morgan, is so attached to him. Harry Arkwright is good value as the wet, rubber-bodied, goonish Sir Andrew Aguecheek and I enjoyed Tom Walker’s deliberately hammy doubling as Antonio though a wittily daft puppet.

Malvolio is, of course, a gift of a part and James Lavender makes the very most of it. His smiling, primping appearance to court Kali Peacock’s colourfully strident Olivia, absurdly naked except for his yellow swimming trunks, socks and sandals, is splendid theatre. So is the dungeon scene and Malvolio’s final, bitter “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you” when the joke is well and truly over as Feste - the admirably versatile Tom Walker - leads the cast in an upbeat, hilariously incongruous rendering of When That I Was, composed, like all the music in this enjoyable show, by Nick Lloyd-Webber.