Twelfth Night is an abbreviation of Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Subtitles for plays were as popular in Elizabethan theatre as straplines are in Hollywood movies but this appears to be the only occasion on which Shakespeare opted for one. What You Will has many meanings: it suggests that desire is the play’s theme and it is a pun on Shakespeare’s Christian name. It is also a form of instruction, seeming to say: “This is a play called Twelfth Night, make of it what you will.”
Edward Dick makes a real spectacle of it at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park. Significant set changes are impossible here due to the nature of and in the arena so costume, lighting and sound have greater prominence: Dick’s Illyria is a louche parallel jazz universe caught between New Orleans and the Roaring 20s where Orsino (Oscar Peace) is a self-indulgent lounge lizard dilettante and Olivia (Janie Dee) a swirling, smoky vamp underneath her funeral black; more at home on the dance floor than in mourning. It is the perfect setting for this play in which music and song play an important part, so much so that a couple of contemporary numbers have crept in.
Twelfth Night contains the Shakespeare comedy staples of mistaken identity, misinterpretation and gender swapping and the text is full of fairly easy laughs even 400 years on. This production goes further, mining a rich seam of visual humour in the comic plot through inspired costume changes for Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Clive Hayward) who appears as a bumbling Boris Johnson and a succession of comic book characters.
The play’s darker side is equally effectively explored on the circular outdoor stage. The destructive power of unfulfilled desire is brought to the fore: Orsino and Olivia are visibly driven to distraction by unrequited love and Malvolio (Richard O’Callaghan) is utterly humiliated at the play’s conclusion after being subjected to a slightly disturbing level of psychological torment for daring to dream above his station.
There are several strong characterisations and, while Clive Rowe’s Feste almost steals the show, Natalie Dew’s performance as Cesario is extremely good; she is almost unrecognisable when she reappears for the final scene as Viola. Impressive voice work throughout the company ensures that no syllable is lost even when the air cools at sunset and the trees begin to accompany the actors with their whispering leaves.
Go to the Open Air Theatre for Twelfth Night: What You Will see, you will like.
