Twelfth Night, Apollo Theatre, November 2012

In Shakespeare’s day a ‘Lord of Misrule’ would call for entertainment and songs on Twelfe Night, a tradition going back to the medieval Feast of Fools and even the Roman Saturnalia. His play celebrates this by making a fool of the miserable Malvolio, hilariously played here by Stephen Fry, with Sir Toby Belch and others representing the spirit of festive enjoyment.

Played with an all male cast, as in Shakespeare’s original, it was hugely illuminating and fun, particularly with the confusion of identities between Viola/Cesario and her twin brother Sebastian, whom she thought lost to a shipwreck. This production by Tim Carroll has transferred from the Globe where it was impossible to get tickets, and the seats on either side of the stage representing the Globe audience, along with musicians above the set, help to recreate the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s own theatre. As in that venue the performers danced together on stage at the end, rounding off a super evening’s entertainment. Delightful designs by Jenny Tiramani, well lit by David Plater, and the music by Claire van Kampen was ideal, with spontaneous applause from the audience after the musicians’ crescendo at the start of part two.

You won’t find a better cast for this huge bundle of fun. Peter Hamilton Dyer was a wily and bright-eyed jester, and Mark Rylance a cleverly subdued and pretty Olivia, very different from the bullish Orsino of Liam Brennan, who doesn’t seem to realise he fancies his servant Cesario, really Viola, beautifully played by Johnny Flynn as a girl disguised as a man. Here is the theatrical joy of an all-male cast, and Olivia’s servant Maria was gloriously played as a wittily assertive woman by Paul Chahidi. But then there are the real men, or people who think they’re real men, like the idiotic Sir Andrew Aguecheek hilariously portrayed by Roger Lloyd Pack, with Colin Hurley as Olivia’s rowdy cousin Sir Toby Belch. The two of them, along with James Garnon as Fabian, made a fine trio of jokers, listening in the tree house while Malvolio reads that mischievous letter.

At this point Stephen Fry was an utter delight, and the audience roared with applause as he hopped off after reading the letter, returning for the postscript. In the second part, thinking he’s on a winner and persistently smiling at Olivia, he came over as a sympathetic character, easily misled into believing he could raise his status. Of such errors is life made and entertainment provided, as Shakespeare knew so well. An iconic reading of the role in a wonderful production — get tickets if you can.

Performances continue until February 9, 2013 — for details click here.

All’s Well That Ends Well, Globe Theatre, London, May 2011

A young Count, Bertram is brought up in the same household as Helena, a doctor’s daughter he has neither courted nor encouraged. She loves him, is desperate to marry him, and his mother favours the match, but his adamant refusal is over-ruled by the king, so he leaves home, and we should sympathise with him. Yet we don’t. Shakespeare gives us a most dislikeable character, unnecessarily brutal in his rejection of a fine young woman who has miraculously cured the king’s sickness.

Ellie Piercy as Helena with Sam Cox as the king, all photos by Ellie Kurttz

On the other hand, Helena herself is hard to love. She is no Juliet — I’ll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange — for though wedded to him, she is yet a stranger and her cunning hoists him on his own petard. He writes a letter saying, When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband: but in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never’, yet this clever woman, who performed a miracle on the king, produces another on her husband. Using the ‘bed-trick’ she gets another well-born young woman to promise to lie with him at night, acquire his ring, and then substitutes herself.

Colin Hurley as Lavatch with Janie Dee as the Countess

Although Shakespeare’s title yields one of the most well-known aphorisms in English, this play itself is little performed. The young couple are unsympathetic and occlude their meanings in a plethora of prodoses and apodoses, continuing even to the end as Bertram says to the king, If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly/ I’ll love her dearly ever, ever, dearly, to which she responds, If it appear not plain and prove untrue . . . To these quasi-endearments the king finishes by saying, All yet seems well, and if it end so meet,/ The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

James Garnon as Parolles

The king — the lynch pin of this play — was superbly portrayed by Sam Cox, with noble bearing and fine diction yet still with a subtle comedic touch. In fact the wittiness of this production by John Dove came over well, aided particularly by James Garnon as Bertram’s friend Parolles, a braggart and coward, and with Colin Hurley as Lavatch, the fool in the Countess’s household. She, the mother of Bertram, was vividly played by Janie Dee, exhibiting life and good sense in the same measure as her son lacked it. Her affection for Ellie Pearcy’s well drawn portrayal of Helena helped give us some sympathy for this rather too clever young woman, who was well matched by Naomi Cranston as the shrewd young Diana who apparently seduces Bertram. He of course is not to be favoured by the audience, but Sam Crane portrayed his unlikeability mainly as diffidence, and his speeches were often a string of words generating little sense, with a voice that could not be clearly heard when he turned his back to the audience. But the cast as a whole did a superb job of bringing this strange comedy to life, and their dancing on stage when the play was over allowed all the characters but one to show rhythm and sparkle.

Well worth all the effort of those rehearsals, this production continues until August 21 — for more details click here.