UN PROBLEME AROUND SHAKESPEARE'S TWELFTH NIGHT. To 30 AUGUST.
Edinburgh
UN PROBLEME AROUND SHAKESPEARE'S TWELFTH NIGHT. To 30 August 2004
C Venue (C-1) Chambers Street To 30 August
4.30pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval
TICKETS: 0870 701 5105
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 August
High jinks and physical larks round a well-known story.Somatic Tintamarre, the anonymous, 5-strong physical theatre company performing this impressively enjoyable show, exploit Shakespeare's plot mercilessly. Serves him right - it's just what he did to other people's stories. Yes, he improved on them all poetically. But ST improve on him physically. The jokes are muich better without words ("Cucullus non facit monachum" - ha,ha an audience never chortles. And that's one he used twice. The old ones aren't always the best, let's hope).
Surprisingly, perhaps, the elements this company takes are not from the roustabout comedy below and behind stairs in Maria's house. There's an al-purpose daftie lover who might stand for elements of Sir Andrew Ahuecheek or even, slightly, Malvolio, but is just as fitting as a disrespectful parody of Orsino.
It's the high life that provides the merry spills of this piece. There's vaudeville fun with a ship that keeps getting out-of-line with its passengers, and a lot of swooning and ferrying about of hapless, inert bodies. It's what love does, to which is added that physical awkwardness so frequent in physical comedy - it seems impossible to get Olivia's body to lie flat on a ladder-stretcher, without arms or legs spilling over the sides.
The mirror gag, most famous perhaps through the Marx brothers (Duck Soup as I recall) is touchingly employed. Even with their white-faced, red-nosed make-up it's clear the two characters reflecting each other's moves (and artfully failing to do so at key moments) are not identical.
But they are brother and sister - as supposedly identical as any two actors in a conventional production of the play. These siblings reunited form a touching moment in a hectic, skilfully performed show.
2004-08-16 11:04:08