Twelfth Night
About the Production
‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’ And ‘Twelfth Night’ is surely Shakespeare’s greatest rom-com.
In Illyria, disguised Viola becomes a reluctant go-between in the unrequited courtship of disdainful Lady Olivia by Illyria’s Duke, the lovesick Orsino. This gives rise to perhaps the most famous love triangle in English literature: Uptight Olivia falls madly for the impudent ‘Cesario’; who is desperately in love with wistful romantic Orsino; who is besotted with haughty Olivia. The secondary plot concerns the antics of Olivia’s disreputable uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and his band of ne’er-do-well accomplices from Olivia’s peculiar household. These deplorables embark on a spiteful ruse to humiliate Olivia’s insufferably overstuffed steward, Malvolio, but get their comeuppance when drawn into the Viola / Sebastian mix-ups.
Historical Illyria roughly corresponds to present-day Croatia, but this ostensibly foreign setting (as in most of Shakespeare’s comedies), is not remotely real nor realised. It’s merely a conveniently far-flung land where strange things can happen, yet firmly rooted in a familiar Tudor world of great houses and box hedges, butts of ale and casks of sweet Spanish wine. Shakespeare’s Illyria is clearly within hailing distance of the Thames Watermen, with visitors from Messaline putting up ‘in the south suburbs, at The Elephant’ – as did many visitors to London (hence the Elephant & Castle).
So while Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a brace of obviously Anglo-Saxon buffoons, rub shoulders with exotically named characters like Orsino, Antonio, and Malvolio, these would all have been instantly recognisable types to the groundlings packed into the playhouse yard of The Rose or The Globe… Orsino, the effete, capricious aristocrat; Antonio, the seaman-adventurer struck from the mould of Hawkins, Drake and Raleigh; and Malvolio, the killjoy puritan stuffed-shirt.
In the interests of duration (about an hour in each half) and clarity, we’ve made some cuts to the text here and there, notably to many of Feste’s extended quips. These were no doubt hugely funny to an Elizabethan audience, but 400 years later many of these jokes, topical references, and allusions to classical mythology have lost all meaning and will simply puzzle a modern-day audience.
Our aim is to present Twelfth Night in the spirit in which we guess it was intended to be played – an exhilarating romantic romp, shot through with a vein of wistful lyricism, full of music and song, and rounded off with a quicksilver exuberance and delight in life.
With more songs than any other Shakespeare play, as Orsino says, ‘If music be the food of love, play on’
The Cast
Behind the Scenes
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The Reviews
Actors Achieving Greatness In A Coulsdon Wooded Glade
DRAMA IN THE PARKS: Somewhere under the trees in Old Coulsdon is an Elizabethan rom-com romp. BELLA BARTOCK had it, and herself, covered.
As I gazed across the fairway at one of Coulsdon Court’s “twilighters” ferreting around in the undergrowth for his latest lost ball, I pondered what Shakespeare himself might have made of the game of golf. There is no shortage of medieval sporty references in his works, from falconry and archery, there’s backgammon and even football. Bear baiting, rightly now regarded as an abhorrence, gets a mention in Twelfth Night, which the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon is currently performing in a wooded glade between the 9th and 10th holes at Coulsdon Manor Hotel.
But there’s no mention of golf in any of Shakespeare’s works, not even in the Scottish Play, which suggests that his Bardness never encountered anyone wielding a mashie nibblick on the links at Stratford. Had he done so, then it will have been Shakespeare, surely, who will have coined the phrase “a good walk spoiled”. He certainly came up with plenty of other lines well remembered and repeated even today.
Twelfth Night has its fair share of bons mots. Right from the start, there’s “If music be the food of love, play on…”, as our players set the scene for the mistaken identity comedies to come. There’s the first recorded use of the word “whirligig”, and “no more cakes and ale” rings out familiar across the stage, too. There’s also the well-cast line, “Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. And some have greatness thrust upon them.” Given that this is delivered by self-reverential Malvolio, deftly performed under the trees by TWC regular Bruce Montgomery, it was clear he had himself in mind as one who was about to have greatness thrust his way. A bit like Jason Perry in May, when he was elected as Mayor. There’s a good chance self-regarding Perry will mishandle his situation as badly as Malvolio does in Twelfth Night. Mayor Perry would do well to pay a visit to the Coulsdon outdoor theatre before its run ends next weekend. He might pick up a few tips on how to avoid making a fool of himself. After all, as Shakespeare observes elsewhere in the piece, “There is no darkness but ignorance.”
Following two wretched years of covid, our local AmDrams are at last back performing with summer productions in the open air, though they really could do something to avoid date clashes, because reviewing two productions in two nights really is more than I can take 50 years on from when I was drafted in as an emergency dresser for Dame Edith at the Old Vic.
According to the notes in the excellently produced programme, TWC has been here before, having produced Twelfth Night 23 years ago, when they were performing at The Woodman pub in Woodmansterne (Bill the bawdy Bard would have approved). Four of the 2022 cast are back for more (though not in the same roles, thank goodness!), but there were others among a most gifted cast who weren’t even born at the end of the 20th Century.
Esme Jennings, who plays Olivia, has just been accepted into the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. Perhaps stardom beckons for her like other past TWC performers, such as Art Malik? Lucy-Ann Bird is another youngster, whose Maria, in scenes with Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, provides the glue that holds the piece together. The cast even includes a couple of teens, Tom Phasey, as Sebastian, and Arlo Woodford, as an officer, whose acting belies their youth.
Indiana Scorziello is now a TWC regular, and she just keeps getting better. Her performance here as resourceful Viola masquerading as young gentleman and go-between “Cesario” is central to the piece, and is well delivered.
Shakespeare gave the Elizabethan public what they wanted: a rom-com romp with a ship wreck, where aristos fall in love with servants, pomposity is pricked when stewards indulge in absurd delusions of grandeur, and where the only sane or sober one among the cast members turns out to be the in-house comic, Feste, played with some aplomb by Anya Destiney.
A bit of cross-dressing went a long way in Shakespeare’s time (there wasn’t much on the telly, after all), and any staging in the open air comes with its challenges. But here, Harris and Lewis have excelled themselves. Not the Hebridean islands, but Steve Harris and Keith Lewis, the stage crew and part of the company responsible for building the three-part deck stage that provided a versatile and compelling setting for the action and was readily visible for the good-sized audience. But then, all aspects of the backstage production work, the sound and subtle lighting for dusk, to the luscious costumes, worked well and enhanced the piece. Part of this is undoubtedly because of the steady-hand of the director, Richard Lloyd, assisted by Pete Bird, once again delivering a show to a very high standard.
Lloyd, as Sir Andrew, in the scenes he shares with Mike Brown as the rumbustious Belch and Simeon Dawes as Fabian, nearly steals the show, with some of the most inventive staging, best prat-falls and Shakespearean comedic acting you are likely to see. It certainly had the audience fully engaged and laughing out loud.
In the end, it all comes down to colour choices and cross garters as well as the cross-dressing. You need to see it through to the end to see how it all works out… Suffice to say, it’s to be hoped that we won’t have to wait another two years to enjoy another TWC spectacular.
Bella Bartock for Inside Croydon, July 30 2022
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