Despite the title, Twelfth Night isn’t a play about Christmas, but Tom Littler’s production arrives like a Christmas gift. It starts off sombre then turns delightful. He has set it just after the Second World War, and designers Anett Black and Neil Irish have lined the balcony front with panels that list the fallen, while below, a baby grand piano is set centre-stage on a burnished copper floor, the clock-face-like centre of which is slowly turning.
At the piano sits Stefan Bednarczyk as Feste, the notes he plays matching the tolling bell we have already been hearing as black garbed figures gather for an internment or a memorial. He is the in-house entertainer for the Lady Olivia, who also moonlights at Duke Orsino’s, the Elizabethan Fool, his motley now turned into evening dress, ready to pop in or out of the action at any point. It is he who stirs up a storm on the keys when the scene shifts to shipwreck and Patricia Allison’s Viola is cast up on the shore of Illyria fearing her twin brother Sebastian (Tyler-Jo Richardson) is drowned and deciding she will be safer if she disguises herself as a boy.
In the guise of Cesario, Viola gains a post at Orsino’s court and is sent to woo Olivia on his behalf, though the lady has rejected all the Duke’s previous advances; she is still mourning the recent deaths of her father and brother. Viola / Cesario is very matter of fact, s/he doesn’t wallow in the poetry, but Olivia falls for her, while she has already fallen for Tom Kanji’s Orsino, who thinks he is in love with Olivia but—well, just watch him reaching out for Cesario’s hand on the piano top as they talk about love. Dorothea Myer-Bennett’s Olivia is so smitten with Cesario, she excitedly goes around sharing her feelings with audience members.
Then there’s the subplot with Olivia’s resident uncle Sir Toby Belch and her housekeeper Maria and their scheme to bring puritanical butler Malvolio down a peg. Clive Francis and Jane Asher make an excellent pairing. He’s a jovial, white-haired old fellow still wearing his medals from the memorial ceremony. He may get out of hand sometimes, and the way he is fleecing his sidekick Sir Andrew is disgraceful, but you get the idea he was once a favourite uncle, and that is the side quick-witted Maria sees. Robert Mountford’s Sir Andrew isn’t as big an ass as he is often played; he knows his own failings and gains our sympathy.
Meanwhile, it turns out Sebastian (Tyler-Jo Richardson making his professional stage debut) hasn’t drowned, and his privateer rescuer Antonio has fallen for him. Corey Montague-Sholay’s gentle performance suggests real affection without the artifice of the other pairings and perhaps it isn’t entirely unrequited; there’s a hit that Sebastian might swing both ways.
Butler Malvolio is devoted to Olivia, someone else who is besotted—he even fantasises that they could marry. In seeking to puncture his pride, Maria and Toby break his heart if not his spirit, and Oliver Ford Davis gives an incomparable performance of a man who is given a glimpse of a dream fulfilled and then shattered. The schemers may think him as a spoilsport, but he was only doing what he saw as his duty.
With Ford Davis, Asher and Francis, an older generation sets the standard for the rest of the cast to step up to. The result is a sparkling production that makes a great night out and with a seasonal touch too.
Reviewer: Howard Loxton