Not a Book: Twelfth Night

This is my second post about a Shakespeare play in under a month, and considering how rarely I got to see Shakespeare – in the grand scheme of my theatre going, this is quite something. However as I said in that post about Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night is my favourite, so here we are.

This is the RSC’s latest production of the comedy, at the main theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon with a cast lead by Samuel West as Malvolio and Freema Agyeman as Olivia. Set in a sort of floating now (or at least floating near-now), what you can’t see from the pre-show set up is the giant organ set that is the backdrop to most of the show and allows characters to appear, disappear and hide as well as providing some of the music. it’s dark and melancholy but also a bit dreamy.

Having seen a few different versions of this now – from the Trevor Nunn directed film, through the Globe all male production and right back to my very first at the Barbican in the mid 1990s – I love to see the different ways that directors can take the show and how they can highlight some things and how many different ways there are to play it and how many different roles can actually steal the show with a cracking performance. That Globe production absolutely belonged to Mark Rylance’s Olivia – all gliding like she was on wheels and building to a screaming climax at “Cesario, husband, stay”. This production might have been stolen by Michael Grady Hall as Feste if it wasn’t for West as Malvolio – and taken over all they balance each other out in a way. Feste is ridiculous – whether it’s his giant yellow and black costume at the start or when he’s painting the organ with a paintbrush made for fine art. It can sometimes be hard to see why the household wants to take quite such a drastic action against on Malvolio but West does a good job of making you see why they might want to do that – and then manages to make the audience feel almost guilty for laughing at him by the end.

This is only on until next weekend, but I really hope that it gets a run at the Barbican as the Dream has this year – I would happily see it again because I’m sure there’s a load of stuff that I would notice going on behind the main action at a second viewing.

Have a great Sunday.