Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Orange Tree Theatre)

This year's Twelfth Night productions have leaned extra heavily on the idea of the play as a melancholy one, and while the cliché about it being Shakespeare's farewell to straightforward comedy tends to be code for "we forgot to make it funny," the Open Air Theatre managed a version of that approach that really worked for me. Sad clowns are clearly the order of the day at the Orange Tree as well, where Tom Littler's production sets the action in the 1940s, presumably very soon after the end of the Second World War given the whole stage becomes a War memorial inscribed with names. Anett Black and Neil Irish's designs are in mournful monochrome apart from the yellow stockings, and at the start of the play Olivia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) is in mourning for her father and brother, both recently deceased, and judging by the portraits in uniform in her cabinet, both killed in action.

This doesn't stop Archetypal Richard Curtis Protagonist Orsino (Tom Kanji) from ignoring both her circumstances and her regular protestations of disinterest, and relentlessly sending her declarations of love. The latest emissary is his new servant Cesario, whom Olivia instantly falls for.

Complicating things further, Cesario is actually Viola (Patricia Allison,) a young woman in male drag; as well as the fact that her twin brother Sebastian (Tyler-Jo Richardson,) who she believed dead, is also wandering around Illyria looking just like her. But Littler's production has been largely focused on Olivia's household, who provide the major subplot, and who've been cast much older than usual: Notably the 85-year-old Oliver Ford Davies as Malvolio, the steward who takes grim satisfaction in denying the rest of the household the drunken evenings they enjoy.

There's also 78-year-olds Clive Francis and Jane Asher as Olivia's uncle Toby Belch, who decides someone needs to bring Malvolio down a peg or two, and Maria, who actually has to come up with the details of the plot to punish and humiliate him. So the feel is very much of veteran actors getting a chance to play dream roles that had eluded them, and their joy and enthusiasm at finally getting to do them comes across very strongly.

On the other hand the opportunities for big physical gags are pretty nonexistent, and while there's always a warmth under the air of wintery sadness, it's not something that often translates into actual comedy. The intimate staging is both a blessing and a curse: On a slowly-moving central revolve is a piano at which Stefan Bednarczyk's Noël Coward-like Feste sits throughout, providing all the music, some of the sound effects, and often a melancholy underscore to the story. It does even further restrict the action though.

But the moments when Littler gets creative around this central feature are the ones where the comic business properly comes to life, like the scene of Viola and Sir Andrew (Robert Mountford) each being convinced the other is an invincible opponent, or the gulling of Malvolio where the others hide behind the piano, and a lot of ad-libbing fun goes on. (Note to the woman sitting behind me though: A gag about Malvolio struggling to read Maria's handwriting is not a prompt for you to speak out and show off how well you know the text. Actually neither is any pause of more than a millisecond that the actors might make.)

As is more often than not the case, the production acknowledges that Sebastian and Antonio's (Corey Montague-Sholay) relationship is probably a physical one, which I think could have been handled a bit more subtly to avoid the unfortunate implication that Sebastian isn't entirely into it. Antonio is also dispensed with pretty casually at the end, even left out of the parade of sad characters that accompanies the final song. Meanwhile if you're casting the characters much older than usual it's worth using that to the production's advantage more: One of the best gags is when Olivia orders Malvolio to run after Cesario, and Ford Davies plaintively asks her: "...run?" It's a sweet production overall; but I'd have liked it more if the times the audience actually laughed came closer to double figures.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare is booking until the 25th of January at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.