Twelfth Night
Duke of York's Theatre Winter 2009-2010

Those who don't demand that their comedy be laugh-a-minute, but can appreciate the creation of a world of warm, gentle humour with room for sweet sentiment and even pathos, will find much to take pleasure from in this Royal Shakespeare Company transfer from Stratford.

I have watched almost every scene in the play - the one about the girl who dresses as a boy and is sent by her boss to woo the lady he loves, who falls for the messenger - staged with more comic hilarity in one production or another over the years, but I have never seen one that is so much of a stylistic piece throughout and that is so infused with love for all its characters.

Almost from the start, we realise that nobody onstage is too grotesque or extreme to be liked, and that most of them feel an unstrained warmth toward each other.

Jo Stone-Fewings' Orsino may be lovesick and in love with love, but he's never ridiculous, and Nancy Carroll plays Viola as if she were Rosalind, more spunky and in control than victim of her disguise, so that her double quandary of falling for the employer who thinks she's a boy while Olivia is falling for her is one we're confident she'll navigate.

In the other house, Alexandra Gilbreath gives Olivia enough self-awareness that she's never more foolish than she'll allow herself, while playing her attraction to Viola as sincere and not absurd.

Indeed, warmth and an anchor in humanity characterise all of Olivia's household, as opening scenes make clear that Pamela Nomvete's Maria has real affection for Miltos Yerolemou's Feste, he unfeignedly enjoys the company of Richard McCabe's Toby, and so on.

Even Richard Wilson's Malvolio is introduced, not as a figure of absurd self-importance, but as an only-slightly-stuffy professional who takes his job seriously.

(This means that one of the problems that frequently makes this play fall apart in other productions - the potential clash in tone between the light romance and the cruel practical joke played on Malvolio - isn't a real issue here. Because the comedy always has an anchor in reality, and because Malvolio doesn't really deserve his torment, his mistreatment is clearly presented as going-too-far, and the one character the play does lose sympathy for is Sir Toby, precisely because he violates the unspoken code of amiability that binds all the others.)

Much credit, then, to director Gregory Doran for not only having the courage to treat the play with gentle warmth rather than straining for laughs, but for guiding his cast toward creating and sustaining that sweet and happy tone.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - Twelfth Night - RSC Duke of York's