This outdoor Twelfth Night is a sunny treat, says Alice Cairns...
OUR VERDICT:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a really bad production of Twelfth Night. That may be because I’ve been spectacularly lucky. But it may also be because there’s something about Shakespeare’s most bittersweet comedy that’s hard to get wrong.
On the surface, it’s a light-hearted, gender-swapping romance. Washed up on a foreign shore after a catastrophic shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a man. The music-mad, love-addled Duke Orsino puts her to work wooing the beautiful Olivia on his behalf – but the course of true love never did run smooth, and soon we’re knee deep in a crisis of mistaken identities and comic confusion.
But underpinning all that fun is some real darkness – there’s madness and mourning, loneliness and love unrequited. At the end of the play, half the characters on stage are getting married, while the other half watch from the fringes, perpetual outsiders excluded from the happy ending. I may never have seen a bad Twelfth Night, but the very best productions I’ve seen aren’t afraid of the dark.
So was that true of the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s production? Well, not exactly. Although it doesn’t actively shy away from darkness, this production does tend to stick to the sunny side. You’re unlikely to leave at the end of the night in the grip of an existential crisis. But the whole thing is so well executed, and so much fun that in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to dock a star for the lack of shadow.
And really, this production has plenty to recommend it. There are lashings of music – much of it ably sung by Rosalind Blessed’s arch Feste. Then there’s the gorgeous location; an outdoor performance in the grounds of Guildford Castle, miraculously bathed in sunshine on the night of my visit.
Most importantly, the cast is universally excellent, delivering Shakespeare’s poetry with admirable clarity. Francesca Barker does a great job in the central role of Viola, hopelessly in love with Tom Richardson’s earnest, foppish Orsino. Matt Pinches delivers a scene-stealing Toby Belch, Sarah Gobran is an upright and dignified Olivia, while an elaborately bewigged James Burton is a wonderfully priggish Malvolio. Emma Fenney’s Maria is quick-witted and canny.
The action has been transported to a 1950s seaside hotel, complete with beach hut, and Feste is reimagined as an entertainer in a bedazzled tuxedo who performs on a piano in the hotel bar. I’m not convinced that the hotel setting really adds much (beyond a splash of summery charm), but the whole thing is so much fun that I stopped caring pretty early on.
Perhaps I’m just a sucker for Twelfth Night, but I came away utterly charmed. I’m still holding out for a production that really delves into the darkness of this most complex of comedies, but till that day comes, this lighthearted production is a real treat.
Venue: Guildford Castle Grounds
Dates: 13-29 June 2019
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