Twelfth Night - NT

After much ado (oops wrong play) secured Friday rush for next week Queen Tamsin here I come!

Saw this last night and couldn't work out why I didn't like this more, was thinking it as I watched which is never a good sign. I loved the revolving set (those actors must have a better sense of balance that I have with all that up steps running)thought it had some very good acting (Tim McMullen drunken and dancing top marks), which happy with gender swaps but I just didn't love it and I really wanted to. I thought Tamsin Greig was very strong, hadn't realised she was a natural comic but I preferred the end few scenes best, she does melancholy, abused very well. The double act or McMullen and Rigby worked whilst being very silly and in Viola and Olivia we had two young, energetic, vibrant portrayals. Everyone in the audience was clearly enjoying themselves, grew roar at the curtain call and ovating and just wanted to be one of them, perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood.

In response to peggs' spoiler... 

Despite the annoying set changes I really loved this. TG for president 😄😄😄

We had a argument break out during our local screening - think someone was helping themself to another person's pick n mix. Much excitement.


I enjoyed Malvolia. I was told off for feeling sympathy for the character during my degree studies but Tamsin Grieg captured the vulnerability without making her that likeable.

Also thought Phoebe Fox was great and liked that Olivia didn't seem to get quite such a happy ending. Her world collapsed when she found out she had married the wrong person - physical similarity just wasn't enough.

Tamara Lawrence and Oliver Chris had great chemistry but, for me, Niky Wardley jarred as Maria some of the time.

I'm not sure I would have been that thrilled with the whole thing if I'd paid for a full price ticket plus travel to London but I enjoyed it and that's the benefit of these live screenings.

I will also be interested to see what The Globe and the RSC do with their versions this year (seriously, don't these guys confer?).

Saw the NT Live broadcast last night, and was weirdly moved by it. My aim for this year is to see more Shakespeare. As a musical Theatre man it's something I've found I struggle to connect with, but I'm educating myself a bit more.

Twelfth Night is easily my favourite now. I roared with laughter throughout the majority of it, loving the confusion and mistaken identity between all of the characters.

Tamsin Greig was for me, perfect. She showed that you're not supposed to like Malvolia, she's supposed to be cruel and unlikeable, until the reveal of her true self at the end (I don't know how to do spoilers on this...)

The first thing i said at the end was 'doing something like that to a classic piece of theatre is so important right now' and I still feel the same. The weight it gave all the confusion was fantastic, and I'm still a bit bowled over now.

4* from me.

Saw it this afternoon, and really did enjoy it. It took me quite a while to warm to it, however. I spent about 20 mins of Act 1 actually thinking I was really going to not enjoy this at all, but it grew on me - hugely so. Seems like I was not alone, though, as the Tuesday afternoon audience was rather subdued and we all seemed to warm to it together at the same time. Obviously a very hard-working and skilled cast, then! No standing ovation but a hugely appreciative reception.

This is very gimmicky and garish Twelfth Night - some aspects of which worked really well, and some which didn't. Lots of liberties were taken, I felt (nothing wrong with that), some which very much enhanced the text and some of which added completely nothing - almost distracted from it. I felt at times like the play alone was not trusted enough to make to people laugh and enjoy themselves, there always had to be something to go with it. Some comedy felt forced - maybe the cast were trying too hard with an initially subdued audience. Fortunately in the end, more worked for me than didn't. Although some lines were heavily acted out/mimed, really hitting us over the head with meanings and double entendres, as if the audience was not capable of picking them all up without guidance. It felt dumbed-down a times, but actually, this is quite a sophisticated production.

It looks beautiful and the set is stunning and really well put to use. A uniformly excellent cast who are all obviously having a lot of fun. A great comic turn from Daniel Rigby but the afternoon just belonged to Tamsin Greig. Her Malvolia is one of my favourite characterisations I've ever seen - it's almost as if the part was always written for a woman. Every look, every gesture, she just had the audience in the palm of her hand and we were all too happy to sit there and be enchanted by her. It really was a remarkable portrayal - her garden scene monologue a real highlight of this or any play, really! And then, at the end, I got goosebumps after he final line. I felt personally guilty! Incredible versatility and range.

A dubious beginning but a hugely enjoyable afternoon.

I had the opposite reaction, in that I found Sir Andrew more funny than usual. There's no accounting for taste, though I'll do my best to account for it (below) lol.

This was an especially funny Twelfth Night, in which the still sad music of humanity was largely zoned out to make way for laughs. I loved it!

Some spoilers follow. . .

Every part in a Shakespeare comedy combines poignant and comic aspects. Simon Godwin seeks to extort and emphasise the comic aspects, and he is more successful at doing this with those actors who have an innate comic gift: Tamsin Greig, Tim McMullan, Daniel Rigby, Imogen Doel and Oliver Chris.

Those actors who do not have such an innate comic gift are a bit at sea with Godwin, and fall back on naturalistic acting skills at the expense of the comic exaggeration Godwin is going for. Phoebe Fox is an extreme example of this, her eyes filling with tears of grief and love, when Godwin wants her to be flopping around drooling for sex, soaking wet and silly in a swimsuit. I have seen Fox a few times, and she is a brilliant actress, effortlessly emotional and affecting, a highlight in dramas, but here the dissonance between her channeling of reality and Godwin's broad comedy vision was disorienting for the audience, who did not know whether to laugh or cry at her slipping on Godwin's metaphorical banana skins, and consequently seemed dumbfounded.

One could easily conclude, from watching this show, that Olivia is simply not a comic part. Yet, at the Globe, Mark Rylance made comic magic out of Olivia, putting on a strange silly shuffle of a walk that made Olivia seem to hover over than stage rather merely stalk it. Every exaggerated foible of Rylance's oozing overemotional Olivia made me bust a gut laughing, rendering Rylance's Olivia one of the funniest characterisations I've ever seen!

There are some superb comic performers in this ensemble, who exploit Godwin's comic caricaturing to the max. Like Rylance's Olivia, comedy caricatures do not move and act like real people, their movements undercutting the audience's expectations of reality, priming them instead for comic surprise. In this show, Godwin divides his comedy caricatures into two basic categories, the slow and stiff (Greig, Rigby, Chris) and the fast and loose (McMullan, Doel).

Which brings me back to Daniel Rigby's Sir Andrew Aguecheek, why I think he's hilarious, and why others may not. He is refined to the most basic gormless "me too" comedy caricature, someone who would fit in perfectly as a punchline of a joke on "The Fast Show," where his bit is to dimly respond "me too," to anything anyone smarter says. Rigby gets the comedy perfectly, the mind of his Sir Andrew ticking so slowly we can hear each tick, his body so stiff we can hear it creak. He's so dumb and so stiff he brings to mind the equivalent comedy caricaturing that Rowan Atkinson worked on his own mind and body to create the iconic Mr. Bean.

And that's where taste comes in, because if you don't like this sort of childish broad caricaturing, you're going to hate this Andrew Aguecheek. But if you are among the vast swathes of people who laughed at The Fast Show or Mr. Bean or any other purely silly-for-the-sake-of-silliness thing, you will laugh your head off. Everyone around me was laughing like no tomorrow at Daniel Rigby's dim stiff antics, and I felt he was the funniest and broadest Aguecheek I've seen. Hugely successful comedy performance!

Tim McMullan finds the fast preening teetering walk of someone whose mind reflects his jacket, dripping with sharpness and lechery, but whose inebriated body can only wobble like a weeble in it's desperation to catch up. McMullan is forever pouncing on people and ideas, like Tom who never catches Jerry, while his body collapses under him, and his sidekick, Rigby's Aguecheek, dimly twitters "me too." What a splendid comedy double act these two are! I was in stitches!

Imogen Doel plays a mini-me of McMullan's Sir Toby, a welcome echo of his fast comic fumbling. Oliver Chris gets all Tim-nicely-but-dim in his phwoar-sulk Fast Show type antics, less successful at mining laughs than Rigby and McMullan, but still hitting the comedy nail on the head more often than not.

And above all, there is Tamsin Grieg's Malvolio, a role this comic actress has been building to for years. At base, the preternatural slowness of Greig's Malvolio's mind, and the supernatural stiffness of her body, exactly mirror the comedy strategy of Rigby's Aguecheek. But Godwin and Greig add another element to her Malvolio, her interaction with the fourth wall. Greig is effectively not only doing a comedy character skit, she is also playing the stand-up comedian, seeking affirmation, and constant connection with the audience. I was thrilled with how confident that connection with the audience was. Grieg is willing to risk long pauses of staring at the audience as she carries out outrageously slow physical demonstrations and replays of her thoughts and actions, with the full knowledge that she will eventually get that teased out punchline. She does this with total stand-up mastery and daring, even while she stays in her comedy character. Only an actress with immense comic instincts and years of comedy behind her would dare do such a thing! It's absolutely masterful, and I found it even funnier than Derek Jacobi's hilarious Malvolio.

In the Globe's recent Twelfth Night, Stephen Fry got no laughs at all, as he played the tragic realism of his pathetic Malvolio to the hilt instead. He may have got no laughs, but at least we understood his pain. Miraculously, in this Twelfth Night, after close to three hours of stand-up and comedy caricaturing, Greig forcefully creates in her Malvolio a realistic pain and a naturalistic fury that was every bit as painful and miserable as Fry's!

Overall, though, apart from Greig's final exit, and Doon Mackichan's Feste's vulnerable and broken rendition of the primally poignant song "Come Away," this Twelfth Night lacks depth. However, because it has some great comedians in it's acting ensemble, capped by Greig's superlative performance, this show emerges as a laugh riot!

4 stars

Why is Fabian in the play at all ? Who is he ? I’ve seen productions where he was omitted and his part given to Feste, not sure I’ve seen Maria replace him but that seems reasonable too.

The role of Fabian has long been questioned. 

In terms of structure, you need Maria to be out of the majority of the letter scene, so that it can be reported to her afterwards (though you could end the scene after Malvolio exits to avoid the recap and thus use Maria rather than Fabian)

I think keeping Feste out of the letter scene does work - as it saves him up for the Sir Topaz sequence.  And as that is heavily featured in the Act 5 revelation, it makes sense to keep that as written.

Where Fabian plays a part is as a minor player in the abuse of Malvolio and thus able to explain things to Olivia in Act 5 without being too heavily involved.  Given that Maria is off tending to the needs of Sir Toby, I can see why the character does still have a role.

I suspect it was written as a role for someone relatively new to the company and thus testing how they could handle a bit of business and some comedy.  

I kept the role when I directed it - and did re-imagine the character as Fabienne, the French housemaid.  So the letter scene was set in the garden with Fabienne hanging the washing out and thus providing sheets and other items for the conspirators to hide behind.

I wasn't impressed by the Bennett Benedick. Part of that was almost certainly Luscombe's unsubtle direction but also he just didn't work for me overall.

Chris isn't right for Benedick - not in the slightest. But so few are!

There are many characters who seem to serve little plot purpose but who still manage to make it to the stage.

Some are entertaining in their own right and worth preserving and others are there to help keep members of the company busy.

In LLL, some productions get rid of one of the couples. I am guessing that is mainly for economic reasons because you can do without them if you must. But there is still something nice about two quartets - it adds a richness and variety to those scenes.

I know of a production of AYLI that has done away with the Audrey plotline. I know why they have done it (having a female Touchstone...) but I would still miss those interactions.

You can have fun with a Fabian - they can be useful colour in the production and give the audience someone new to get to know. Where things tend to get less interesting is with lots of random lords in various of the tragedies and the histories. They tend to be less distinctly drawn and far easier to confuse. Always happy to merge a few of them here and there just to help with clarity of storytelling.

I don't think I have ever watched Macbeth and truly known who LENNOX, ROSS, MENTEITH, ANGUS, and CAITHNESS were as individual characters....