Peter Viney's Blog

Twelfth Night

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Emma Rice

Additional Text & Lyrics by Carl Grose
Design by Lez Brotherston
Composed by Ian Ross

Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Wednesday 24th May 2017 14.00

CAST
Marc Antolin – Sir Andrew Aguecheek
Carly Bawden – Maria
Nandi Bhebhe – Fabian
Le Gateau Chocolat – Feste
Tony Jayawardena – Sir Toby Belch
Joshua Lacey– Orsino
Pieter Lawman – Antonio
Annette McLaughlin – Olivia
Kandaka Moore – Ensemble
Katy Owen – Malvolio
John Pfumojena – Sebastian
Theo St. Claire – Ensemble
Anita-Joy Uwajeh – Viola

MUSIC:
Sarah Homer- Musical director, bass clarinet, clarinet, whistle
Dave Johnsy -guitar, keyboards
Alex Lupo – percussion
Dario Rosetta-Bonelli – guitar
(Though one of them was playing electric bass guitar throughout, I assume Dario)

The third of the 2017 major productions of Twelfth Night and the second to cast Malvolio with a female, following the National Theatre’s version with Tasmin Greig as MalvoliA.  This time we have Katy Owen who was such an entertaining Puck in last year’s Emma Rice spectacle, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is quite different, in that Katy Owen is still called MalvoliO, has a moustache and is referred to as “he.”

This performance was the afternoon of “Press Night.” So it was ready to go. They were setting up the press drinks tables after the show. As we left the Swan Restaurant after our dinner, we got a peep of our critical betters grazing at the tables. We dearly hoped that the massive ovation at the end of the afternoon show had set the cast up for their evening press night performance. That must be scary after the vehement attacks on Romeo & Juliet this season. This is directed by Globe Artistic Director, Emma Rice. If Romeo & Juliet was considered two fingers to her critics, will Twelfth Night be rated any better? I saw it before the reviews, though as usual I will note their final ratings at the end.

The start: Le Gateau Chocolat centre on the cruise ship

There was no pre-show … a disappointment. The curmudgeonly might say the first ten minutes of the play is a pre-show anyway, but the point is it is designed for impact, rather than late Elizabethan wandering about before the show. It starts off with dance, on and around metal platforms.  The Globe columns are swathed in grey plastic. The set and costumes suggest a cruise ship, the S.S. Unity.

The shipwreck addition: Viola (in mauve) and Sebastian on the right

A horizontal metal walkway collapses in the added shipwreck, and then forms a near 45 degree walkway entrance to the set from balcony level. It is utilized to good and comic effect throughout. The balcony is dominated by a huge moon (something we’ve seen SO often in A Midsummer Night’s Dream though it’s hard to link it to Twelfth Night.) Coloured lighting around the moon shifts through the scenes. Yes, they’re electric. Coloured spots are used in various places. Sound effects are recorded.The initial dance is to Sister Sledge’s We Are Family … played live, thank goodness. A great song, which bookends the play, resurfacing in the encore. I glanced at my watch on the first line from the play, (What country friends is this?) and we are a full ten minutes in. During the next few minutes the live band play behind the lines, making them hard to grasp. At this point, I’m hugely impressed by music and movement, but relieved that I know the play well, because a newcomer would have found it hard to follow the text. It does clear up. But I’d have to say it fails my “transparent if you’ve never seen or read the play” test. The best Shakespeare productions do not rely on previous knowledge.

What country friends is this? Viola (Anita-Joy Uwajeh ) is shipwrecked (

At this point, it was definitely looking like Twelfth Night-The Musical and though music dominated, we do get back to the lines and comic interaction.

There has been so much said on what is “The Globe” and what is NOT “The Globe.” I’d say you expect it to  be played large, and it is  … it’s a big space, it’s open to the sky, hundreds are standing, f*cking helicopters tend to hover. That’s right. You will be told that Shakespeare was played in the costumes of the day, not that we know, so this is “contemporary”.  Not that it is. 1977 is forty years away. This is set in the “late 70s” or “1979” (my companion says costumes are early to mid-70s) and this Illyria is, according to the programme interview, a remote Scottish island, on which the cruise ship has crashed. There are a lot of kilts at various times. Sir Toby Belch is in white Dress Stewart tartan (from my memory of once selling tartan car rugs). Sir Toby (Tony Jayawardena) and Maria (Carly Bawden) have Scottish accents. But Duke Orsino (Joshua Lacey) is English.

Malvolio is Welsh. A costume issue is how you will cross-garter Malvolio in modern dress. At Chichester years ago, Patrick Stewart was a Scots kilted Malvolio and had his cross gartering below the kilt. A missed opportunity – Malvolio has yellow shiny trousers and yellow Pringle pattern socks. Scotland is also referenced by Sir Toby playing golf and Orsino taking Cesario fishing. To repeat myself, we always talk about Viola, but if you’ve never seen the play, we have an un-named shipwrecked girl, who then pretends to be a boy, and adopts the name Cesario. We only discover right at the end that her name is Viola.

Marc Antolin as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, arrives sliding down the banister

They’re interesting costumes. When the English Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Marc Antolin) moves from pink Pringle sweater and golfing trousers to a kilt, his is pleated in schoolgirl style rather than Scottish highlander. Antonio, the sea captain, who has rescued Sebastian, has not only a rough kilt but a shoulder cloth making him look more Rob Roy than Edinburgh tattoo. Viola and Sebastian are in white with gold trim cruise ship uniforms. At the beginning and end, when Viola is a girl, she has a fabulous flared 70s jump suit … mauve at the start, white at the end. OK, they look great. No, they will not please the Elizabethan / Jacobean costume lobby. We found the 70s references wonderful, particularly the mullet hair styles on Orsino and Sir Andrew. My companion noted her mother’s 70s tea trolley at one point. Cesario keeps trying to play Orsino’s love song to Olivia, and carries a bulky early 70s mono cassette player that crackles.

It’s an ensemble production. Everyone in the cast dances and sings, often in places never envisaged before. It doesn’t matter who you are, you strip to white sailor gear and dance whenever required.  Antonio and Sebastian arrive through the audience in a fiberglass dinghy Witchcraft, and there’s Toby Jawayardena, otherwise Sir Toby Belch, pushing it through the groundlings.

The music and dance is wildly eclectic  … disco, Scottish country reels, romantic tango for Sebastian and Olivia, salsa, punk, 70s prog rock. A major decision  was that much of what Feste has in the script is guff, so change it all to song, then cast a magnificent and imposing singer, the transgender Le Gateux Chocolate  (yes, that’s his name) as Feste to carry it. The Shakespeare clown often sounds like punning guff nowadays, though the “competition” at the National Theatre and Watermill this year both DID make sense of Feste. Feste is one of the clearer clowns. I believe strongly that the clown role always had license to improvise which is why so many faithfully read punning clown parts fall flat.

Katy Owen as Malvolio

In this production, the license to add lines has been transferred to Malvolio instead. Sir Andrew also gets a running gag interpolation. That works, because of the innovative casting of the diminutive Katy Owen as a tiny Welsh Malvolio. She can do it with ease, proudly pointing out an innovation is a rhyming couplet, as can Sir Toby when reciting the verse of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.  Katy Owen is irritated when approached with a balloon, protesting “I have an allergy to latex.” Malvolio has a couple of Look You’s … Shakespeare’s indicator of a Welsh comic actor he must have had in the company. It was perceptive to pull that out. It IS a cliché, but a Welsh accent so suits the comic bureaucratic, bossy Puritan. Then add the touch of tentative prurience. Sorry to my Welsh readers, but writers have been using that connection for centuries. Malvolio imposes order with a referee whistle.

Malvolio’s height (Katy Owen is tiny) is accentuated by casting a tall Olivia and putting her in a smart black skirt suit, veil and heels. Olivia is one of the best female roles in Shakespeare, and Annette McLaughlin got all the humor from it.

At the Tequila: Sir Andrew (Marc Antolin), Maria (Carly Bawden), Sir Toby (Tony Jayarwadena)

The quartet of plotters, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria and Fabian worked. Tony Jayawardena was a huge boisterous Sir Toby, Marc Antolin’s Sir Andrew minced with abandon, and Maria was in maid’s uniform and sexy (and sang formidably). The listening scene in the garden was done with three of the plotters in large leaf covered sacks, that Malvolio proceeded to snip with shears, and they eschewed the obvious snipping near the groin area too.  Malvolio lost a lot of lines in the letter reading unfortunately, which meant it lost some of its usual humour. The duel with Cesario is done as a boxing match with seconds and rounds. Because Sir Andrew was given a degree of freedom, the part was enhanced.

Tony Jawardena as Sir Toby and Carly Bawden as Maria

Joshua Lacey was a macho swaggering Orsino. They were heading in that direction with Oliver Chris in the National Theatre production, but this took it to the extreme. Playing big? Yes, but it works in this space. His audience work is splendid. This guy knows how to work a crowd.

It must be the third or fourth time the “twinness” of Viola and Sebastian has been created by casting both as Afro-Caribbean. It works, but (you’re not supposed to say this) it works far better if they’re the only Afro-Caribbean actors in the cast. They’re not here, but height and hairstyle match, and the strong sailor costumes reinforce it. Anita Joy-Uwahjeh is a very fine Viola too. She looks perfect, but I said the same about similar National Theatre casting. Short hair works with a beautiful Afro-Caribbean look. Sebastian had a great high soul voice too, and his role came out more strongly than usual.

Olivia (Annette McLaughlin) and Sebastian (John Pfumojena ) tango

The play has “additional text and lyrics” by Carl Grose. Really a LOT of additional text and lyrics too. From memory I believe they simplified many lines, as well as cutting heavily. In the text, at the end Antonio says:
An apple cleft in twain is not more twin than these two creatures

This became An apple cleft in two  … but then I Googled and both versions come up as quotes. I got the impression they thought twain a tad esoteric. It was for my auto spell checker that insisted on ‘train’ then ‘strain’ then ‘twine.’ No, I don’t usually know the text that well, but I used the quote in my ELT video comedy thriller Double Identity. It made me realize that for some of the more august reviewers, knowing every line in a play might be a barrier to their enjoyment. This is not a faithful rendition of “the play what Shakespeare wrote.”

The Malvolio in the dungeon scene … Fabian & Maria watch from above. At night this is red lit.

Overall? Well, I laughed till my sides ached. The music was extremely good. The dance even better with so many outstanding movers on stage.  The thing about Twelfth Night is that though the great actors of the past went for Malvolio, it’s full of strong parts, and they all get a decent shot at the comedy limelight which creates a balanced ensemble. All the comic parts shone. It’s an experienced cast too. Tony Jayawardena and Annette McLaughlin have done solid RSC time. Joshua Lacey has done National Theatre and Trafalgar Studio as well as Imogen last year. Marc Antolin and Katy Owen have worked with Kneehigh. Le Gateau Chocolat, like Miaow Miaow last year brings in charismatic presence from outside “regular theatre.” So while I also miss the great Globe regulars of 2011-2015, the replacements are first rate.

Joshua Lacey as Count Orsino

I fear much of it will annoy Ms Rice’s detractors even more, but as with A Midsummer Night’s Dream last year, she won us over. The issue is, as I have said before, that the Globe can do two or three out of five like this a year. The problem is in doing everything like this. I’d hope that the new management for 2018 invites her back to do one a year in her style! The vitality and energy burst over us in the audience. Like most of the audience we left with broad smiles and good vibes.

For sheer entertainment, my typing fingers hover over 5 star, but I’ll drop one for confusion for an audience who didn’t know the plot , especially losing the early lines below music.

****

RE-GRADING

Having seen all four Twelfth Nights this year, this was the best of the lot. Stylistically it’s also a game-changer: in November we found the RSC production sadly lacking in pace, youthful vitality, exuberance in comparison. In retrospect, having seen this twice, I’m re-grading to 5 star.

*****

SECOND VIEWING

Wednesday 28^th June 2017 19.30

L to R: Sir Toby Belch, Maria, Fabian, Sir Andrew … being admonished for rowdy behaviour

I came back to see it at night. The lighting plot is extensive and changes it radically from an afternoon performance. In the afternoon, Malvolio’s “prison” didn’t make much sense, but at night with red fluorescent tubes and red lighting overall, his protests about being “in the dark” figured. Nearly all of the pictures online so far look like afternoon performances.

The issue at the Globe is shared light … at night, it always used to be that stage and audience were equally lit at The Globe as in Shakespeare’s day when they could only have operated in daylight in the big public theatres. As it got darker here, it became more like a conventional theatre with elaborate lighting, and the audience in shadow … I’m sure it affects acting style, in spite of the many funny interactions with the front row of the Pit.

Over a month, the performances have got a tad larger, business extended a little too. The already brilliant ensemble dancing is even tighter, as one would expect. A responsive audience whooped loudly at every kiss, which I didn’t recall in the afternoon.

The night version is considerably more “unGlobe like” because you don’t notice the lighting plot much in full daylight. It does make full use of the Globe stage shape and interactivity, even while casting aside so much of the language and poetry.

There were a lot of Americans near me. I heard one saying at the interval that “Orsino as Mick Jagger is a travesty” and he didn’t return after the interval. The 70s swagger was very “un-Mick Jagger” to me, but it was rock star. His was the only empty seat I noticed in Act Two. Others around me were very surprised, but also highly impressed by the show. We chatted about the issue, and they said exactly what I’ve said, “This was wonderful, but why can’t they do one or two like this, but the rest in the traditional Globe way.”

Peter Hall wrote in 1966:

It is impossible to cut a word in Twelfth Night. Even its obscure jokes are brought alive by the exuberant rhythm of the scenes. It belongs to that small group of Shakespeare’s plays (Macbeth and The Dream are others) the are sinewy and compact. They have no excess fat. Twelfth Night is complex, ambiguous and heartbreakingly funny. It is the masterwork among the comedies. 

We get all the exuberant rhythms of the play here, but the impossible has been done and the words have not so much been cut as slashed. The play is robust enough to get away with that for me, though Katy Owen is so magical that I can’t see any justification for shortening the letter reading, and losing the biggest laugh in recent productions as people fill in that missing letter:

This is my lady’s hand: these be her very c’s, her u’s (long pause) and her t’s, and thus makes she her great P’s …

The end result is magical entertainment, but often it’s deviation from the plot and text that are the most fun.

MUSIC CREDITS

Another programme that fails to note them. So I will.
We Are Family was written by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, and recorded by Sister Sledge
Whip It Out was written by Mark Mothersbaugh, and recorded by Devo

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
I have usually found myself agreeing with Michael Billington. This is the third time in recent weeks that I found my views far closer to Dominic Cavendish. And well done, Quentin Letts for also sailing against the tide.
5
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail *****
4
Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph, ****
Time Out ****
3
Paul Taylor, The Independent ***
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, ***
Mark Shenton, London Theatre Com, ***
Maxi Szalinska, Sunday Times ***
2
Michael Billington, The Guardian, **
Anne Treneman, The Times **
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times **

TWELFTH NIGHT ON THIS BLOG

• Twelfth Night RSC 2012
• Twelfth Night – Apollo 2012  Mark Rylance (Olivia), Stephen Fry (Malvolio)
• Twelfth Night- ETT 2014, Brighton Theatre Royal
• Twelfth Night, National Theatre, 2017
• Twelfth Night, Watermill, Newbury 2017
• Twelfth Night, The Globe, 2017
• Twelfth Night, RSC 2017  
• Twelfth Night, Young Vic, 2018
• Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s Globe, 2021

EMMA RICE ON THIS BLOG
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic

TONY JAYAWARDENA
The Tempest, RSC 2016
The White Devil, by John Webster RSC 2014
The Roaring Girl, by Dekker & Middleton RSC 2014
Arden of Faversham – RSC 2014

KATY OWEN
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016

JOSHUA LACEY
Imogen (Cymbeline Renamed and Reclaimed) – Globe 2016
wonder.land by Damian Albarn, Moira Buffini, National Theatre 2016
Richard III – Trafalgar Studios, 2014

MARC ANTOLIN
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic

CARLY BAWDEN
wonder.land by Damian Albarn, Moira Buffini, National Theatre 2016

ANNETTE McLAUGHLIN
Volpone, by Ben Jonson, RSC 2015
Love’s Sacrifice  by John Ford, RSC 2015
The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe, RSC, 2015
Measure for Measure, RSC 2012