Twelfth Night at the Orange Tree is a night to remember. The play was Shakespeare’s second identical-twins comedy, after the earlier Comedy of Errors. Only this time it would be boy-girl twins, just like Shakespeare’s own twins Judith and Hamlet (or Hamlet). The first recorded performance of Twelfth Night was in Middle Temple on Candlemas Eve in 1602: Shakespeare’s twins had been baptised seventeen years earlier to the day. The play is a free-for-all comedy as its full title, Twelfth Night or What You Will, suggests. Like all Shakespearian comedy it has a dark side, but that should not distract from the sheer fun of it. In that respect last night’s performance was a breath of fresh air, seasoned with melancholy and mellow autumnal brilliance.
The cast was star-studded by any standard; indeed, quite possibly the most famous line-up of legendary names in British theatre on the night in the country. Inevitably perhaps the younger actors of the upstairs romance plot were somewhat overshadowed by the sheer exuberance of the downstairs revellers. More than any other production I have seen in recent years, last night’s performance brought out the extent to which this play is really about downstairs, the lyricism and gentle comedy of the Orsino-Viola-Olivia plot notwithstanding. Twelfth Night is saturnalia rather than romance.
Dorothea Myer-Bennett excelled as an all-too-eager Lady Olivia while a boozy Sir Toby Belch on steroids (a dazzling Clive Francis) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Robert Mountford) stepped out of Blackadder Goes Forth (Sir Andrew in spats and toffy George would be instant soulmates) and Brideshead Revisited. Jane Asher was superb as Maria and Oliver Ford Davies was an outstanding Malvolio: a doddery steward, clutching a tiny teddy bear in bed, but still with enough fire in his belly to try to woo Olivia.
There are so many small inventive touches in this production, all adding value to it. While it stays largely loyal to the text, its jazzy improvisations work very well; as in Maria’s ‘humble slough’ glossed, for Sir Andrew’s benefit, as ‘near Maidenhead’, a neat double-entendre, or in Sir Toby’s ‘Am not I consanguineous?’, which needs to be translated, to Sir Andrew, as ‘Am I not of her blood?’ Not to mention the classic Shakespearian word play on ‘accost’ and ‘Mistress Accost’.
Arguably the stroke of genius of last night’s production was to have a hugely accomplished singer-actor-pianist play the part of Feste. Shakespeare wrote the part almost certainly for the actor singer Robert Armin, as he had done As You Like It earlier. In Stefan Bednarczyk we had our own 2024 Robert Armin Plus. Such was his exquisite mood-setting on the piano throughout that one half expected Orsino to say ‘Play it, Sam / Stefan / Feste’; not least because the mid-1940s tuxedos and medals transported us straight into the world of Casablanca. Feste as a fixture, a singing-pianist chorus on a rotating inner stage, worked tremendously well. Credit where it is due: Tom Littler’s Twelfth Night is a terrific show. And he is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most imaginative and creative among contemporary directors, standing on the shoulders of Peter Hall and Trevor Nunn.
Twelfth Night at the OT may well be the best Shakespeare in town yet this year.
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Director: Tom Littler
Cast includes: Janer Asher, Oliver Ford Davies, Clive Francis, Patrica Allison, Stefan Bednarczyk, Robert Mountford, Dorothea Myer-Bennett, Tom Kanji
Runs until: 25 January 2025
Running Time: Two hours and 55 minutes (including one interval)
Photo credit: Ellie kurttz
Review by: René Weis (see Shakespeare Unbound)
29 November 2024