Review: TWELFTH NIGHT, RSC
Photo credit: Helen Murray
Twelfth Night is the climax of the Christmas season when decorations are taken down and revels and masked balls took place, often with guests in disguise and parlour games were played in Victorian Times. Nowadays, it seems to be around the time that many pantomimes end their runs as the children return to school and parents to work.
Shakespeare’s play, which carries a subtitle of “or what you will”, was written around 1600 and is full of gleeful humour while dealing with the baser aspects of human nature around food, sex and revenge. We last saw it with Adrian Edmondson playing Malvolio in the 2017 RSC production, which set it in the Victorian period. The latest production with Samuel West in the tragi-comic role of Malvolio sets it later in the 20th Century and at times, seems to borrow from the pantomime genre. We have, of course, cross dressing as Viola disguises herself as Cesario, we have plenty of slapstick comedy, loads of knowing audience interaction and asides, and Feste makes several flying entrances and brings it right into the 21st Century with yellow and red cards to send someone off. It provides the whole cast (and it feels a very big cast with many extraneous extras) an opportunity to join the fun led by Malvolio and Feste.
The production is grandiosely staged on the thrust stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and music is very much part of the play, underlining the famous line: “If music be the food of love, play on”. As if to drive that home, the huge pipes of the organ dominate the back wall of the stage for most of the action, replacing a rather odd letterbox effect of the opening scene supposedly symbolising the seashore. This sets up the best visual gag of the show when Orsino (Bally Gill) arrives with a gift of a small organ in Act 2 and reacts with a “Oh that’s big” line. You can’t help reflecting that no other theatre (with the exception of the London Palladium pantomime) would spend that much on a back wall setting. At various points, characters are seen painting the walls for no obvious reason, a distraction to the main action.
The story revolves around four central characters. Viola (a boyish Gwyneth Keyworth) in disguise is sent to woo Olivia (a grieving aloof Freema Agyeman), while Olivia’s two servants Malvolio (a superb comic performance full of pathos from Samuel West) and Feste ( a pantomime clown energetically engaging the audience at every moment from Michael Grady-Hall) cause mayhem in a subplot with the other guests. As one character says: “If this was played on a stage, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction”, and it is hard to disagree. When everyone mistakes the identity of the twins, Viola (5ft 2 inches tall) and her brother Sebastian (Rhys Rusbatch, 5ft 11inches tall) when there is such a physical difference, and one is in braces and the other a belt, you really do have to suspend your disbelief! Although Olivia’s ”most wonderful” when she realises there appear to be two of her heart’s desire is deliciously lascivious.
The music underscores much of the action with the drunken organist tottering on and off to accompany the performers, almost as in a 20th Century accompanist to the silent movies, and Feste’s songs offer witty and amusing food for thought on the tale in original tunes from Matt Maltese. The Twelfth Night is sometimes called the ‘Feast of Fools’ and the RSC’s production fills the stage with Shakespeare’s foolish characters and has the audience giggling and occasionally laughing very loudly at their antics. As with pantomime itself, a running time of over two and half hours does feel long to sustain the comic intensity and some cuts in first half might have helped but the second half is a triumph with Malvolio and Feste running riot and Olivia’s charming emergence from Widow’s weeds into excited delight is a joy to behold.
This production is another sign that the new leadership team of Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey are breathing a fresh energy and creativity into the RSC as they grapple to bring the organisation under control so that Shakespeare’s work is honoured and refreshed on stage and in schools, while financial discipline and audience development are maintained. We can look forward to seeing what 2025 brings for this important theatrical company.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
Twelfth Night plays at the RSC in Stratford upon Avon until 18 January 2025, with further info here.