By Laura McBride
A review of the RSC’s sumptuous, colonial ‘Twelfth Night’ starring Adrian Edmondson as Malvolio. This new production was streamed live to CLV by RSC Education on the 8th of March, 2018.
‘Twelfth Night’ is one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays, covering themes both trivial and sombre, from the myriad different manifestations of foolishness to the vulnerability of women in Elizabethan times. A sumptuous new iteration of the play, directed by Christopher Luscombe, was streamed into both schools and cinemas nationwide in March 2018.
The plot is complex and humorous; identical twins Viola (Dinita Gohil) and Sebastian (Esh Alladi) are shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria, where they are separated. Viola disguises herself as a eunuch named ‘Cesario’ for her own protection, and enters the household of Duke Orsino (Nicholas Bishop), who sends her to woo the mourning Countess Olivia (Kara Tointon) on his behalf. However, Viola has found herself falling in love with Orsino, while Olivia falls in love with ‘Cesario’. The inclusion of a subplot regarding Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby (the gigantic John Hodgkinson), and his foolish companion, Sir Andrew (Michael Cochrane), working with her maidservant and a clown to trick her overbearing steward Malvolio (Adrian Edmondson) completes the basis of the plot, both of which converge by the final act.
In this particular performance, director Luscombe chose an 1890s setting, thus making the overall staging of the play nostalgic in its newly post-industrial self-assuredness. The play used several different sets throughout; a luxuriously decorated red suite for Orsino’s home, a paved garden for Olivia’s courtyard, complete with Grecian statues, a suffocatingly formal setting for inside her home, and a train station that would not look out of place in Beamish. These, in combination with dark lighting, created an atmosphere reminiscent of the smog of industrial cities, yet was interspersed with brighter - but not stark - lighting during scenes that were either more satisfying for the audience or more easily funny.
The cast featured many new faces for the Royal Shakespeare Company, with the majority of the primary cast performing in their debut season. Particular stand outs include Beruce Khan as Feste the clown, who walked the line between unhinged and perfectly reasonable to great success, and John Hodgkinson as Sir Toby Belch, who delivered a comedic performance with undertones of menace that reflect how easy it is for performers to forget about Sir Toby’s darker traits. Adrian Edmondson’s Malvolio also deserves commendation for his ability to make the historically dour character almost loveable, turning him from the comic antagonist to a pitiable victim by the finale.
A theme explored in this adaptation was colonialism. Due to the time setting of this production, it falls under the gaze of the British Empire, the influences of which are not ignored. Sebastian and Viola are played by actors of Indian descent and, in a post-show interview, Dinita Gohil stated that she imagined her character on the boat with Sebastian travelling to England from India for an education, much like many citizens of the colonies did. Orsino’s home in particular shows inspiration from the Orient, and ‘Cesario’ is dressed in an ornate achkan while serving in his household, thus showing the separation between Viola as something “other” compared to the upper-class English outfits of her fellow servants and master.
There were some modifications of the script too - Act 1 Scene 1 was played after Act 1 Scene 2, likely to signpost to the audience that the protagonist is Viola and to give less significance to Orsino (Nicholas Bishop). This meant that Orsino’s famous opening line, “If music be the food of love, play on” was relegated to the second scene, reducing the impact of the line. At the play’s conclusion, Orsino’s closing line was given to Olivia, which was an interesting choice, as it is a romantic declaration of love and status - this relegated it to Olivia remarking upon the situation, while perhaps removing the symmetry of the play. To the average person watching this production, these changes may have gone unnoticed, but the literature fans watching it at Cramlington Learning Village were not best pleased. Neither were they happy that easily Malvolio’s best line, “Go hang yourselves all”, was cut from the broadcast due to the unfortunate side effect of buffering!
This version of Shakespeare’s play was more stylistically appealing than it was satisfying, some cast members, such as Maria (Vivien Parry), spoke too quickly at times to understand the humour in the words. The resolution was not as satisfying as it could have been, in part due to Malvolio’s heartrending performance alongside Sir Toby’s cruel dismissal of Sir Andrew, and in part due to changing the speaker of the final line. Thus, this version of ‘Twelfth Night’ was not as stellar as some of the individual performances. It was extremely compelling in concept, but sometimes lacklustre in execution.
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