Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 10 April 2017

Simon Godwin directs Tamara Lawrance as Viola, Oliver Chris as Orsino, Phoebe Fox as Olivia and Tamsin Greig as Malvolia in a fascinating and at times hilarious modern dress production designed by Soutra Gilmour.

The gender confusions of this play, in which Viola (in Shakespeare's time played by a boy) spends much of the time disguised as a boy while falling in love with Orsino and being pursued by Olivia, are given added twists here by re-shaping the part of Malvolio as a woman, Malvolia, and also having the clown Feste played by a woman (Doon Mackichan). A couple of minor characters also become women, while the boundaries of friendship and the desire for a more intimate affection are also blurred for Antonio and Sebastian, for Orsino as he befriends the disguised Viola, and, at a comic level, even Sir Andrew Aguecheek's attitude towards Sir Toby Belch.

The whole question of the seriousness of love is undermined by all this, as one can hardly take seriously the ease with which Orsino drops Olivia when Viola is revealed as a woman, the ease with which Olivia accepts that she has married Viola's brother mistaking him for the disguised girl, the ease with which the brother accepts marriage with a woman he as never seen before, and so on and so on. Somehow none of this matters in witnessing the play in performance, as the comic energy and the conventions of the form take us by storm.

More perplexing perhaps for a modern audience is the treatment of Malvolia, here played as a humourless wet blanket all too easily gulled into believing that her mistress Olivia is in love with her. Tamsin Greig's performance is hugely enjoyable - she has the audience eating out of her hand from her first appearance to her last - priggish in the early scenes, and then hilariously gulled, but she shifts without any strain to being painfully distraught when locked up as mad. The tone inevitably changes here and we can barely laugh at this torture nowadays, but the production manages to take the awkwardness brought on by modern sensibilities in its stride, reminding us almost wistfully that happy endings are not for everyone even in a comedy of misrule.

The tangled love plot is well conveyed by those concerned, though I thought that Phoebe Fox's Olivia shouted too much as a sign that she was unable to remain constant to her plan of being in mourning. It seemed more an attempt to deal with the Olivier's unforgiving vastness than an aspect of character (especially as everyone was, as is now usual, miked). Oliver Chris presented Orsino as an attractive and self-assured alpha male with a breezy sense of entitlement occasionally punctured by confusion at being attracted to a (supposed) page boy. Even after all has been apparently cleared up, he manages to embrace Sebastian (really a young man) rather than his intended bride Viola - comic resolution played for laughs - but it hardly dents his charm. Tamara Lawrance invested Viola with an engaging ardour and unaffected lovesickness, though occasionally her verse speaking was inelegant.

The comic secondary figures were a constant delight, even Feste managing the difficult task of portraying an Elizabethan fool as both comic and wise to a modern audience.

The set made great use of the Olivier's huge acting space, with a versatile staircase able to be a narrow and perilous ship in a storm, or to open out to frame scenes in a hospital, an amazingly camp tavern, or, more usually, parts of Olivia's estate or Orsino's house, helped by the revolving stage. This wonderful fluidity enhanced the pace of the production while allowing for the subtle shifts of tone that made it such a success.