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  Twelfth Night |
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 | Reported by guardian.co.uk
on Friday, 23 October 2009
(on October 23, 2009) |
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Courtyard, Stratford-upon-AvonGive British directors a really difficult play like Titus Andronicus or Timon of Athens and they normally triumph.
Present them with arguably the greatest comedy ever written, Twelfth Night, and they often falter, as the last two RSC productions have proved.
But, with Gregory Doran at the helm, we are in safe hands, even if this handsome Levantine revival needs time to mature.Its great success lies in its assured handling of the romantic plot in which the disguised Viola finds herself torn between her master, Orsino, and his hoped-for mistress, Olivia.
Nancy Carroll's Viola is not just plausibly and boldly boyish but also touchingly vulnerable in her erotic confusion.
She also encounters one of the best Olivias I have seen in the shape of Alexandra Gilbreath.
There is a wealth of vanity in this countess who, removing her mourning veil, presents her profile and cries "Is't not well done?" But Gilbreath also captures perfectly Olivia's journey from dizzy rapture to disenchantment to renewed ecstasy on encountering Viola's twin brother.
And her cry of "most wonderful" on seeing the twins together brings the house down.
Where the production seems less secure is in the comedy.
It has the advantage of a fine Malvolio in Richard Wilson who makes excellent use of his capacity for expressing withering disdain through elongated vowels.
Wilson also finds pathos in the steward's tearful belief "that my lady loves me", and has a chilling moment at the end when, turning on his tormentors, he displays the rictus-like grin that he was gulled into adopting.
But the great scene in the garden is somewhat awkwardly staged.
And, while I have no complaints about Richard McCabe's wind-breaking, coldly exploitative Sir Toby Belch, or James Fleet's fop of an Aguecheek, some of the other roles are less well-defined.
Milton Yerolemou's Feste, in particular, seems excessively manic.Over-emphasis is, in fact, the production's prime fault.
It seems superfluous, in the comics' nocturnal drinking, for the on-stage racket to be augmented by Paul Englishby's music.
And even Carroll's excellent Viola falls into the trap of italicising the verbs.Cavils aside, this is a pleasing production that looks good in Robert Jones's design with its honeycombed walls and Levantine opulence.
It is also a revival that has the capacity to grow even better, once it trusts the play's opal-like shifts of mood to work their Shakespearean magic.
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