TWELFTH NIGHT. To 25 October.
Manchester
TWELFTH NIGHT
by William Shakespeare
Royal Exchange Theatre To 25 October.
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2.30pm & Sat 4pm
Runs 3hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 September
Inventive water-sports but the script eventually drowns in the added business.
What is it with Lucy Bailey, Shakespeare and water? After sploshing her Dream cast around in the forest last year at this theatre, she turns Twelfth Night into a muddle in the puddle as water gradually floods the floor of the apparently Caribbean 'Illyria hotel'.
At first it's only the unaware who get caught out - the likes of Jonathan Bond's Sir Andrew. With his ever quizzical face, it's hardly surprising he's first for baptism, while more knowing folk such as Sir Toby and Eliot Giuralarocca's high-stepping, quick-witted Fabian (unnusually forceful for this character) paddle deliberately with shoes and socks kept dry.
But eventually, it's all into the sea of romantic desire and illusion (the audience, happily, is permitted to sit the general dipping out in dry stalls).
Malvolio, dupe of dupes, positively revels in his bath, lying on the ground. For no-one on stage is more sunk in the mire of his self-loving emotions.
Though it's a stormy night, the heat of day lingers behind this decayed hotel lobby - sofas may sit around intact recalling better days, but reception desk and bar part-sink into the ground.
Heat's indicated by this tactile society. Malvolio's not above a grope or two, Orsino hugs and kisses his servant Cesario long before discovering he's really the woman Viola. And Viola's twin brother's discovered in bed with his friend, seaman Antonio.
Olivia, mistress of the household, is found lying in her own bed, suspended from the Exchange's first circle. Characters moving along the walkway designer Katrina Lindsay creates here have to step over this bed; the mistress's self-absorbed grief is a hurdle.
The most intellectually exciting Twelfth Night I can recall was at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre some years ago. It was deeply unfunny. There are exciting ideas in Bailey's production. But, though there are fusing lights, and electric sparks in the final storm, as the Illyria's guests pack up and prepare to return to real life, it's been a fitfully illuminating Shakespeare comedy.
I found it overall glum. And the laughter- of which there was plenty more from other seats than mine - was very largely caused by stage business. If some of Shakespeare's jokes (cod Latin, Aristotle) are lost to us, there's plenty that isn't.
Take the famous scene where Malvolio reads the love-letter supposedly sent by Olivia,the mistress (ie employer) he adores. The laughter lies in exposure of the character's self-approval. How easily he's convinced by the thin deception.And how Shakespeare prepares for this by the steward's solitary preening, after he's been previously seen doing his job - however pompouslyand in however a bullying manner (going for Maria, the servant he can easiest order about).
The scene's richer because we feel superior to him, not only by understanding his faults but knowing he's overlooked by his enemies. Bailey adds unlikely farcical business, as Fabian keeps dodging secretively about the stage repeatedly relocating the letter Malvolio seems unable to locate. It sticks to his foot, it's shoved by a sofa over which Fabian tumbles.
Deprived of the stipulated hedge to hide behind, Toby and Andrew appear in monstrous drag as two tea-taking ladies. And I know it's going to appear tediously pedantic, but where's the sign this hotel still serves tea? If it operates thus, doesn't that work against the production's sense of real life being in abeyance during the emotional fooling?
More basically, the visual comedy comes to seem an apology for lack of comic litheness and subtlety in speech.
Then, too, the three-tier set is great for runabouts and chases, but defuses the focus of the action. As the evening wears (advised term) on, not only Shakespeare's script, but the director's own perceptions about it become drowned in fuss and fury.
Be thankful then fo rthe generally strong performances,and particularly Emma Cunniffe's Viola, first found slowly swinging down from the theatre's heights- flung overboard by the storm, she's helpless in pretty-girl flouncy pink.
But Viola's inner resources soon emerge in male guise as she employs male body-language - after a moment for thought - and as she looks shocked at her beloved Orsino's depreciation of women's emotional capability. Here, anyway, is a true Shakespearean experience.
Viola: Emma Cunniffe
Sea Captain: Gordon Langford-Rowe
Orsino: Mark Bonnar
Curio: Gary Lammin
Valentine: Ryan Barber
Sir Toby Belch: Richard O' Callaghan
Maria: Ellen Thomas
Sir Andrew Aguecheek: Jonathan Bond
Feste: Anthony Barclay
Olivia: Madeleine Worrall
Malvolio: John Ramm
Fabian:Eliot Giuralarocca
Antonio:Adonis Anthony
Sebastian: Sven Pannell
Director: Lucy Bailey
Designer: Katrina Lindsay
Lighting: Jon Buswell
Sound:Steve Brown
Music: Luke Stoneham
Fights: Renny Krupinski
Aerial trainer: Rebecca Truman
Dialect coach: Tim Charrington
Assistant designer: Marco Waschke
2003-10-07 14:24:10