Twelfth Night, Royal Shakespeare Theatre review - comic energy dissipates in too large a space

It is not just Twelfth Night, it’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will in The Folio, a signpost of the choices the inhabitants, old and new, of Illyria must make. Perhaps it’s also an allusion to Will’s own choices as an actor/playwright in the all-male company who cross-dressed (and maybe more) as women and girls without batting an eyelid.

As is so often the case with the comedies, the great entertainer doesn’t hesitate to smuggle in a soupçon of transgressive psychology under cover of farce.

We open on a young woman clambering out of the sea, shipwrecked but unbowed, soon seeking employment in the household of the local duke, the bachelor Orsino. To do so, the woman must pass as a man, so Viola becomes Cesario and soon her wit and unusual demeanour win her favour with her master and a job as a surrogate wooer of his indifferent love interest, Olivia. That wit and exotic appearance works its magic again, the grieving noblewoman falling for the fascinating boy emissary rather than his master. But Viola has eyes only for the Duke, so there’s your love triangle.

If that’s the vehicle for Shakespeare to examine the mysteries of the human heart with a side order of role play and blurred genders, a subplot of drunken gentlemen and conniving servants brings the humour, leavened with the cruelties of a different age. Sir Toby Belch is English, entitled and, ultimately, pitiable; Sir Andrew Aguecheek is American, Woosterish and biddable; Malvolio is ambitious, pompous and delusional; Feste, the jester, is anarchic, funny and perceptive.

It’s quite a collection for director, Prasanna Puwanarajah, to control but, with the help of a gigantic organ (no giggling at the back, that’s the sort of innuendo only Shakey himself would essay in legitimate theatre) he does move the pieces around, even if the square, often empty, stage feels a bit like an island in a vast ocean at times. Comedy needs proximity to work best (think of the flat in Steptoe and Son or the cabin in Airplane!) so one does feel a dilution consequent on the cavernous playing area at times. At least Puwanarajah leans into the problem, with Feste not just appearing from the wings, but also descending on a wire, the theatre, with the organ pipes ascending as a backdrop, becoming a cathedral. What we lose in intimacy, we gain in spectacle. That said, it’s impossible not to think that it would all work a lot better next door in the smaller Swan Theatre.

Enough carping - there’s fun to be had! 

A charismatic Samuel West wisely throttles back a little on Malvolio’s distaste for his fellow workers, coming across as merely officious tather than bullying, which, after a splendidly over-the-top cross-gartered, rictus-grinning attempted seduction of a horrified Olivia, heightens the poignancy of his fall. Joplin Sibtain’s Sir Toby dials down the pranking laddish quality of the old soak’s personality and is nastier, less attractive, perhaps truer, as a result. He’s a freeloader, leeching off his niece and his friend, and it’s hard to warm to him even a little. He, and Maria (Danielle Henry), the co-conspirator in Malvolio’s humiliation and subsequent torture, probably deserve each other as they choose to leave at the end with Olivia’s contempt to chase them away. 

Gwyneth Keyworth has the sly look Viola/Cesario needs when indulging in his subterfuge, but her slight stature and pitch of voice are barely those of an adolescent boy - the contrast with Rhys Rusbatch’s Sebastian, her so-called identical twin, is marked. That's quite a point of difference with the splendid Twelfth Night at the Orange Tree, in which every effort has been made to make the twind indistinguishable. So it does raise the question that underpins the alternative title. What if all the lovers are in on the ruse, because it gets them what they want, at least at that moment?

Freema Agyeman is an imperious Olivia, but she shifts her affections to Sebastian pretty quickly when Cesario reveals herself as Viola, a hitherto unheralded superficiality in the heiress. Bally Gill’s Orsino gives plenty of encouragement to his manservant who isn’t a man, and Cesario more or less tells him that any suspicions he might have about what’s (not) under his breeches is true - the Duke probably knows what’s coming in the big reveal. The King’s Men played female characters in many plays, so what could be more natural to them than a little convenient gender fluidity?

If assigned gender mattered little on the early 17th century stage (and matters less and less in the 21st), any boundaries crossed going unpunished, indeed, unremarked, one cannot say the same about social hierarchies. Samuel West gives Malvolio the accent closest to RP that we hear - we must assume that, like his bearing, it has been acquired after years of conscientious effort. Two knights and three servants (Fabian joins Maria and Feste in the plot) bring him down, the cruel quintet exacting a price for his misguided aspiration to rise above his station. One ponders on the alliance of billionaires and working class poor that has swept Donald Trump back to The White House and, in this country, the ex-public schoolboys beloved of the working class poor in the post-industrial small towns. The play contains a useful lesson in how such disparate bedfellows can work together to bring down those who condescend them.

The Eraserheadishly coiffured Michael Grady-Hall (pictured above), steals the show as the clown/singer/commentator, Feste, licensed to tell truths, break the fourth wall and drop the trousers like Brian Rix in 1974. He got a tremendous reaction from the schoolkids in the Gods, a nice throwback to the raucous nature of the groundlings of Shakespeare’s own day. While one could go along with Feste’s anything-for-a-laugh snaring of Malvolio, his delight in fooling him a second time as the fake pastor who visits the incarcerated, miserable man, is harder to credit. That said, never trust a clown on stage eh?

Matt Maltese’s songs add much to the jollity and slapstick as well as illuminating characters, but there’s something a little too heartless about this production. Of course, catching the right balance between the light and shade of the play is very much a choice for each director and will land differently for each person in the house. There was just a little too much open space, malice and knowingness in this version, an undertow dragging the comic pace back and leaving us, after almost three hours, thinking about the issues when we could have been smiling about the comedy.     

• Twelfth Night at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until 18 January
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk