Love is in the air and everything is at sea in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy of confusion and excess. Shipwrecked Viola, believing her twin brother drowned and her fortunes lost, disguises herself as a man to make her way on this strange shore. She soon enters the service of the lovestruck Count Orsino and is dispatched to win the heart of the beautiful Olivia for her new master. Read more …
Before long the land where she has washed up is proving no less tempestuous than the sea she escaped as she unwittingly begins a tangle of confused desires and mistaken identity. Lords Belch and Aguecheek bring cakes, ale, revelry and mischief to the party and soon even the redoubtable servant Malvolio is wearing yellow stockings, a foolish grin and hoping that love will thrust greatness upon him.
Swept along on waves of passion and grief, virtue, lust, ambition and grace, these are some of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters caught up in a breath-taking tale that seizes the imagination and stays with you forever.By mixing Scots, Irish and Welsh accents, Riordan’s reading suggests a fractured set of countries, each one isolated by their losses. Only when Viola finds her twin Sebastian does any kind of unity occur. Even then, Feste’s final song is a solitary lament, both for his lot and the times he lives in.
It leaves us with a mature, slick and polished production, but too wistful and elegiac to do justice to the comedy.
Lacks the light-touch sense of humour and blazing wit that is the key to every aspect of this great drama, in all its darkness and light.
Perth Theatre's Twelfth Night full of Celtic connections
Perth Theatre, Perth from Thursday September 29, 2011, until Saturday October 15, 2011. More info: www.horsecross.co.uk
RSS feed of Theatre reviews