Twelfth Night
Cottesloe Theatre    Winter-Spring 2011

The National Theatre's eightieth birthday gift to its former Artistic Director Peter Hall is this lovely small-scale production of one of Shakespeare's more enigmatic comedies.

Twelfth Night - about the girl disguised as a boy, who falls in love with her boss, who sends her with love messages to the lady next door, who falls for the messenger - can be played for light comedy or romantic sweetness, and Hall has chosen the latter.

Many of the opportunities for injecting big laughs are deliberately glossed over, and it is the softer and more romantic characters and moments that score most fully.

Rebecca Hall (daughter of...) plays Viola with a sharp intelligence - there's always somebody at home upstairs, watching herself and those around her, fully aware of the romantic trap she's gotten herself into with her disguise and bemused by it.

Amanda Drew's Olivia is never made to look foolish in her love for the girl/boy; we sympathise and wish a happy ending for her as much as we do for Viola. Martin Csokas captures Orsino's self-dramatising sentimentality without becoming comic, the obvious fact that his character is a generation older than either of the women giving his love a nice poignancy.

Even the mild surprise of casting the veteran David Ryall as Feste gives the jester a quiet gravity that fits the production's tender and autumnal mood.

In the comic subplot Simon Paisley Day underplays Malvolio, and while we may miss some of the broad mugging and farce other actors have brought to the role, he doesn't warp the play or steal focus from the romance as many do, and Charles Edwards' sweetly dimwitted Sir Andrew is a more successful comic creation than Simon Callow's broader Sir Toby Belch.

Theatrical history may ultimately conclude that Peter Hall's greatest contribution was the revolution in Shakespearean verse speaking he began as founding director of the Royal Shakespeare Company a half-century ago, and it is certainly true that every line is absolutely clear without losing any of the poetic flourishes.

As I've suggested, you may well have seen funnier Twelfth Nights in the past, but not one that captures the play's warm celebration of love so fully.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - Twelfth Night - National Theatre 2011