Theatre review: Twelfth Night (RSC / RST)

The RSC's apparent reverse-Globe scheduling policy of rarer Shakespeare plays in the summer and the most famous ones in winter continues with Twelfth Night as the holiday show. Prasanna Puwanarajah's production even embraces the play's seasonal title with a few Christmas songs and decorations - all fairly subtle though, this story does after all feature a high-profile Puritan, and they were famously not big fans of Christmas. In fact I was meant to see this closer to the season itself but with the train service between That London and Stratford-upon-Avon being nonexistent for most of this month I had to reschedule to the final matinée: I'd rather not have to publish a review after the show's closed but needs must when Chiltern Railways exists. Opening not with the big storm but with Gwyneth Keyworth's Viola spluttering out of the water, the sense of understatement extends from the Christmas trimmings to many elements of the play.

Yes, for my third Twelfth Night in a row this takes the melancholy undertone of the play and makes it an overtone, although thankfully without forgetting to include plenty of comedy - the audience can have their moments of fun from the start, but the characters will have to work for theirs.

Shipwrecked Viola has a plan to work for and eventually marry a local Duke, but when she joins Orsino's (Bally Gill) service it turns out she hasn't thought through the part where she's disguised as a man, so he isn't really looking at her in that way. He is fixated with the Countess Olivia (Freema Agyeman,) but she's in mourning for her brother and doesn't want to be courted. When he's sent to deliver a message Viola's male alter ego not only reawakens Olivia's libido, but also gets caught up in the drunken games of her household staff.

Feste is often described as Shakespeare's most melancholy fool, usually an excuse not to bother making him funny either, but Michael Grady-Hall's overtly clown-like figure bears the weight of bringing the laughs early on with crowd-work, and enough physical comedy to make up for any of the verbal gags that haven't quite kept their freshness for four centuries. He's used almost as a narrator figure holding the stories together, and although it's still mentioned that his position is precarious he's not the tragic, barely-tolerated figure he can sometimes become: People snap at him but he's clearly loved.

Elsewhere the action takes a while to get going as the characters have to get through their sad unrequited love stories before they can join in the fun, but once they do they start to really build something from characters who can sometimes fall flat: Keyworth is a sparky Viola whose mourning is tempered with optimism, and Gill again brings an awkward brand of charm to a romantic lead who isn't always easy to bring to life. Agyeman has a fragility that she enjoys undercutting as Olivia becomes increasingly horny, something that fortunately comes to a head just as Viola's brother Sebastian (Rhys Rusbatch) enters the picture.

The big-name casting here is Samuel West's return to the RSC as Malvolio, Olivia's Puritanical steward. In a role that can bring out some big performances West is another one offering something a bit more understated - a fussy and irritable Malvolio rather than a bombastic blowhard. He still makes his prissiness funny but he seems even less deserving of Maria's (Danielle Henry) grandiose revenge plan than usual.

I wasn't really sold on some of the broader comic performances around this storyline, which might be another reason it felt like I was waiting for the big laughs to come, but while regular readers will both know I'm no fan of the enthusiastic Shakespearean gesture-to-crotch, credit where it's due: I've not seen it used for Sir Toby describing Sir Andrew as having "all the good gifts of nature" before, as Joplin Sibtain does here.

There's some great choices being made here, notably Puwanarajah addressing one of my regular irritants about the play by having Daniel Millar's Fabien onstage as a member of Olivia's household long before he has any actual lines, instead of having him appear out of nowhere halfway through to attach himself to the gulling of Malvolio. There's also some fun design moments like a running gag of Feste being presented with a giant rope-switch he can't resist pulling on despite the results invariably going badly for him.

James Cotterill's design is actually dominated by a giant church organ which provides everything from dramatic musical cues to a forest of pipes for the actors to hide in for the gulling scene, but the most satisfying payoff is again a subtler one, as Orsino arrives with a gift of an upright piano only to realise it's dwarfed by a much bigger organ.

The ideas around how queer Puwanarajah wants to make the play are a bit more mixed - Orsino's court is full of men dancing with each other and possibly also holding a torch for their boss, but the issue's avoided in Sebastian's scenes with Norman Bowman's Antonio. Maybe it was just one thread among the many that there wasn't quite room for - if a bit underpowered at times this is a largely successful Twelfth Night, not revolutionary but with enough unique little ideas (the fake letter being on black-trimmed paper to prove it's from the mourning Olivia!) to make its mark.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare ends today at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Running time: 3 hours including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.