Theatre review: Twelfth Night or What You Will

Despite its wintery title the season Twelfth Night is most commonly associated with is Autumn, usually accompanied by some variation of the dreaded phrase "Shakespeare's melancholy farewell to comedy" in the blurb. Well there's certainly something autumnal about Robin Belfield's production at the Globe, but it's more pagan harvest festival than sad falling leaves. Under a gold wooden sun and featuring a wicker man, Jean Chan's design is all brashly colourful carnival outfits. It's a mood that's infected almost everyone in Illyria, including its Duke who's often seen opening the play lounging moodily on cushions. Instead Solomon Israel's Orsino is definitely up for the party, and is just a bit annoyed that the girl he fancies isn't joining in, or returning his interest - and all because she's still in mourning for all the men in her family dropping dead over the course of a couple of months, honestly some people, such drama queens.

He sends as envoy his new servant Cesario to woo the mourning Countess on his behalf, but this backfires when Olivia (Laura Hanna) is finally brought out of her depression by falling for Cesario. And neither of them realise the young man is actually Viola (Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́,) a shipwrecked woman in disguise.

For the subplot the production brings us a Battle of the Bottoms, both having played A Midsummer Night's Dream's fool at the venue: Jocelyn Jee Esien (2019) is Lady Belch, Olivia's aunt who's here never not swigging from a hip flask to remind us that while she might be fun on stage, she might be A Bit Much to have living under your roof, certainly when she's leading singalongs in the middle of the night. Malvolio certainly thinks so: Pearce Quigley's (2013) hilariously eeyorish stage presence makes it a wonder he hasn't played Olivia's crotchety steward before, and he inevitably brings both a grumpiness that burns through the other characters like a laser, and a lot of surprising comic takes on the character (the way he deals with Malvolio having to constantly force a smile is very Pearce Quigley in the way it prioritises getting the laugh and the meaning of the scene across, over and above the actual words.)

Belfield generally avoids the darker interpretations of the play - far from the ageing Fool who everyone's growing a bit tired of, Feste (Jos Vantyler) is very openly beloved in both households, even getting a smile out of Olivia long before her big lovestruck 180 turn in mood. Ian Drysdale's Sir Andrew, Alison Halstead's Maria and Emmy Stonelake's Fabian give good comic support to the gulling subplot, while the production in general takes huge advantage of having the groundlings there as comic foils, whether it's Lady Belch pouring drinks over them, Feste stealing their snacks, Fabian getting some of them to join in the late-night party or Malvolio needing help reading Maria's handwriting. Although Sir Andrew asking a child to rescue him from Sebastian did backfire when the child ran away scared.

Ignoring the possible darker elements doesn't always work: Some of the danger in the final scenes is an abrupt change, and like many recent productions this one explicitly makes Sebastian (Kwami Odoom) and Antonio's (Max Keeble) relationship a romantic and physical one, without really dealing with what that means when the former gets, to his apparent great delight, accidentally married off to Olivia and the latter gets carted off to prison. (I also thought there was a very obvious gag to be made when Joshua John played both captain of the guard and priest in the play's climax, and was disappointed when the production missed it.)

With a bit of a slow start this seemed like one of those productions I'd mostly smile my way through but it ended up one I laughed out loud at several times, often thanks to Quigley, whose ending of the Malvolio story is the one effective touch of actually acknowledging the play's sadness. No, this definitely isn't the most nuanced Twelfth Night you'll ever see but if everything from A Midsummer Night's Dream to The Merry Wives of Windsor can be endlessly mined for their darker side and be lauded for it, I think it's fair that Twelfth Night gets to be mined for its dafter side every so often.

Twelfth Night or What You Will by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 25th of October at Shakespeare's Globe.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.