Twelfth Night – Globe, 2021 | Peter Viney's Blog

Twelfth Night – Globe, 2021

Twelfth Night
By William Shakespeare

Directed by Sean Holmes
Designed by Jean Chan
Costumes by Sydney Florence
Composer James Fortune

Shakespeare’s Globe, 2021
Broadcast by BBC 4, 8th January 2022

CAST:
Shona Babayemi- Olivia
Peter Bourke- Antonio
Rachel Hannah Clarke- Valentine
Bryan Dick- Orsino
Victoria Elliott – Feste
George Fouracres – Aguecheek
Nadine Higgin – Sir Toby Belch
Nadi Kemp Sayfi- Maria
Ciarán O’Brien – Sebastian
Sophie Russell- Malvolio
Michelle Terry- Viola
Jacoba Williams- Fabian

Because this has been broadcast, you can see it, unlike many plays I review. This was performed in 2021 in front of a reduced and mainly face-masked partly-distanced audience. It was originally played without an interval, which at 140 minutes is pushing it, though at The Globe you can easily wander out to the loo and back without causing any great disturbance. I reckon it was a laudable attempt to get things going after Lockdown by minimizing mingling.

For seven or eight years we saw virtually everything at Shakespeare’s Globe and the Wanamaker Playhouse. We had “Friends” membership. Then they appointed Michelle Terry as Artistic Director. We got ‘director-less democratic plays’ allegedly directed co-operatively by the cast as ‘The Ensemble’. We got costumes that people picked themselves from the store cupboards. We got no designers. We got an artistic director who thought it fair to cast herself and her husband in the lead roles, even taking on Hamlet as well as Lady Macbeth (with Paul Ready as Macbeth).

Olivier did it at the National Theatre. Mark Rylance did it at the Globe – actors as artistic directors. Olivier though was also a director. Olivier was, and Rylance is, one of the outstanding actors of a generation. Michelle Terry was a fine actor, but never in that league. For us, she is a disaster for The Globe. The artistic director should be a director, not an actor. The only actor who could get away with it is Kenneth Branagh (we saw all the Branagh West End season) because like Olivier, he an accomplished director too.

So we go to Twelfth Night, where she plays Viola. We do have a decent director, the associate who came from the Lyric, Sean Holmes. That’s a great relief and a necessary too. Though even then, the photos are labelled ‘The Twelfth Night Ensemble’ that dreaded Terry word. In the list of creatives, it’s alphabetical by name, so Sean Holmes comes after Head of Voice and the Costume Supervisor. Come on! This is taking Michelle Terry’s view of directors way too far. The director should come first. At least Holmes has alphabetical advantage over the Deputy Text Associate, otherwise he’d come below. Many of the cast, the designer and composer were all in Sean Holmes 2019 A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Victoria Elliott as Feste addresses the Pit from a crashed car

The Globe stage lends itself to raucous, broad brush productions, with live music and song. Comedy invariably works better than tragedies or histories. The set design is weird, two crashed vehicles touch the stage in the pit. Then the backdrop is garish with a model tiger and a hanging animal carcass. Some reviewers saw Las Vegas. If so, it’s the old 1950s Strip, not the current one. Others saw British seaside. I’d say ‘Decaying Theme Park’ inspired by Banksy’s wonderful ‘Dismaland’ installation / theme park at Weston-Super-Mare a few years ago. I’d say that with a degree of certainty, because Michelle Terry grew up and went to school in Weston-Super-Mare and will have known about it.

Michelle Terry at the start as shipwrecked Viola

Then there’s the Americana costumes, which is why I think reviewers saw Las Vegas. The variety suggests what you see in a theme park like Disney / MGM or Universal Studios where ‘characters’ stroll around and you can take photos with them. We have a treasured one of Karen with the Lucille Ball lookalike. Viola as Cesario, and her twin, Sebastian are in unattractive green Elizabethan costume with the puffball slashed ‘pumpkin pants.’ As Viola, in the first two minutes, she has a similar green dress. Feste is dressed as a baseball player – we see her get dressed too, which reinforces ‘this is a role for the photos.’ Fabian is dressed as a bellboy in vibrant green. Toby Belch is a Western gunslinger as rapper. Orsino is a country and western singer.

Count Orsino as a Rhinestone Cowboy (Bryan Dixk)

Andrew Aguecheek is pink trousers, green jacket and cravat, maybe a Palm Springs golfer. Olivia is in tight black trousers then a scarlet ballgown. The sea captain Antonio is Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday. I’m not sure what Maria’s costume means. A Las Vegas croupier perhaps? It doesn’t all work for me, but at least though, it IS a strong bright visual concept.

Some decisions are yawningly 21^st century gender blind, like casting Nadine Higgins, a BAME woman as Sir Toby Belch. Casting women as Feste and Fabian is fine- it’s neither here nor there as the roles are not strongly gender specific. I think Sir Toby IS gender specific and the ability to deliver sickening belches at will doesn’t compensate, though if anyone CAN do it it would be Nadine Higgins who is much better than I had expected in such a bizarre casting choice.

Malvolio is played by a female too, Sophie Russell. Tamsin Grieg managed that superbly a few years ago, but then she was supposed to be a female, and projected that she fancied Olivia. You didn’t get that here. Very good line delivery though. The letter reading is good and she squats for the line on how Olivia does her Ps, which indicates she is meant to be female. However, the plotters’ reactions are from the cars in the pit, so don’t have the proper effect. The scene where Malvolio was locked up was done with Malvolio in the trap under the stage with just arms showing and hands waving, which really takes away from the actor’s ability to get a performance across. Bad idea. Oddly, Malvolio has no photo on the Globe gallery.

You don’t expect intimacy and poignancy on this stage, though Rylance and Johnny Flynn managed it in the authentic practices version at the Globe where Rylance was Olivia and Johnny Flynn was Viola / Cesario. That scene should be poignant. It wasn’t. There was zero poignancy or emotion at the ending.

I’ve seen several productions where Olivia becomes the star role. Not here. This Olivia was too tall, striding about, towering over the rest, and worse, too wooden. Then Sebastian was played like a rugby club smoker’s version of an effeminate man. Fine, but then they never exploited the Antonio / Sebastian backstory or undercurrent, as much Antonio tried, because there was no feedback from Sebastian.

Nadine Higgins as Sir Toby Belch, George Fouracres as Sir Andrew Aguecheek

As ever, the performance you remember most is Andrew Aguecheek (George Fouracres), played here with a Brummy accent and that is intrinsically funny for some reason. Fabian does the same accent. They both work. When you look at older productions, Sir Toby Belch was mentioned as the big comic role. Virtually every time I’ve seen the play, Sir Andrew is funnier than Sir Toby. That’s how it’s written. The duel scene however, is just thrown away in a few seconds which is a great shame.

Maria (Nadi Kemp Sayfi) is marvellous – it is a a plum part for me.

Feste is a very hard part to do well (just look at the lines Feste has to deliver) but this was a very good Feste indeed.

The constantly squirting cans of beer deserve a credit.

In the end, I wanted to applaud Feste, Andrew, Maria and Fabian. The four were outstanding. Michelle Terry dressed up as a boy just comes across as looking like a boy, and that doesn’t work for the part – you have to know this is a girl, secretly fancying Orsino. Dare I say that the actor playing Viola should be more feminine in appearance?

It had good reviews. I would have enjoyed it on a sunny afternoon at The Globe, out in the air, particularly the musical references and Feste’s singing. Watching it with close-ups from the camera probably doesn’t improve it though the picture is always crisp and bright which cannot be said for all streamed theatre. It’s very well filmed.

***

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

four star:
Arif Akhbar, The Guardian ****
Gwendolyn Smith, The i ****
Nick Curtis, The Standard ****
AliyaAl-Hassan, Broadway World ****

three star

Clive Davis, The Times ***
Julia Rank, The Stage ***
Theo Bosanquet, What’s On Stage ***

two star
The Reviews Hub **

I felt this one got it right, or rather nearest to my opinion:

The characterisation of Sebastian (Ciaran O’Brien) as a pompous self-regarding Englishman is disturbing: he seems to have nothing in common with his twin. The production is not attentive to much of the real comedy of the piece. Set piece comic scenes are severely pruned – the would-be duel between Cesario and Sir Andrew hardly begins before it is halted, the responses of the characters in hiding who witness Malvolio’s reading of Olivia’s letter are muted, as it is they who play the scene from those two wrecked cars. The audience’s burst of hearty laughter at Olivia’s “Most wonderful!” when she sees two identical husbands is a rare moment when the director trusts the comedy of the text.
Jane Darcy The review Hub

TWELFTH NIGHT ON THIS BLOG