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Published: 27 January, 2011
by HOWARD LOXTON

DIRECTOR Peter Hall spent his 80th birthday beginning rehearsals for this production of Shakespeare’s comedy, which features his daughter Rebecca as Viola, the girl passing herself off as a boy and calling herself Cesario, as whom she is sent to woo the Countess Olivia for Duke Orsino. 

Instead, the Countess falls for her, while Viola is almost instantly enraptured by Orsino.

With designs by Anthony Ward, Hall presents the play in rich lace-collared Jacobean dress on bare boards under a canopy patterned with huge autumn leaves.

Like the music Orsino fancies, it has “a dying fall”; these romantics are in love with the idea of love, even forthright, wide-eyed Viola perhaps.

Why else would she find Marton Csokas’s lugubrious, self-obsessed Duke so attractive – unless it’s a response to the fact that he can’t keep his hands off her? 

There’s no such nonsense about Ben Mansfield’s unsentimental Sebastian, Viola’s lookalike twin, who recognises a good deal when offered marriage by Amanda Drew’s beautiful Olivia. 

Then he in turn is loved by Antonio (James Clyde), who has saved him from shipwreck. 

As if all those complications weren’t enough, there is a parallel plot with Simon Callow’s over-blown, hard-drinking Sir Toby sponging off both his niece Olivia and the gullible would-be gallant Sir Andrew (a delightfully fresh performance from Charles Edwards). 

With the countess’s maid Maria (a sprightly Flinty Williams) they set up a plot to puncture the pomposity of Olivia’s steward, Malvolio. 

Simon Paisley Day presents a very upright Malvolio who knows his romantic hopes are fantasy – hardly more a figure of fun than his betters, who are equally out of the real world.

This Twelfth Night is still a comedy but more thoughtful than festive.

It’s a restrained but clear piece of story-telling, its characters often directly addressing the audience. 

Clown Feste is old and serious as David Ryall plays him, despite his cap and bells. The twins rediscovering each other bring that upsurge of delight that Shakespeare creates in the reunions and reconciliations of many of his plays.

When things draw to an end, this Feste draws the audience to him in the final song.

It is with a muted melancholy that they begin to join him in its chorus.

Until March 2
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