FringeReview UK 2024

Twelfth Night

Orange Tree Theatre

Genre: Classical and Shakespeare, Comedy, Drama, LGBT Theatre, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre Richmond

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

The year’s dark intones in funereal chimes, opening to a very English country house Illyria in this Twelfth Night, directed by the Orange Tree’s artistic director Tom Littler till January 25^th.

It wakens, in Anett Black’s and Neil Irish’s set and costumes, to candlelight and late 1940s loss: figures veiled in mourning loom and vanish. A brass floor gleams with a grand piano on a clockface revolve bringing a whirligig of music’s revenges on time.

And along with the piano, composer Stefan Bednarczyk – aka Fool Feste and Orsino’s musician – virtually never leaves.  He banishes the heavy-lidded start. And with miraculous riffs on Shakespeare songs and (at the arrival of that letter) tinkling a ring-tone, spangles the play. Inimitably urbane he’s no wild Feste: more quietly frolicking genius loci. Leading the cast in catches, he underscores the most orchestrated Twelfth Night imaginable.

Nor is melancholy banished. William Reynolds’ lighting filters day in leaf-lattices, scoops corners of candlelit junketing against chill. On the balconies are inscribed names of loved ones killed in action, sent in by audience members. Joyous and tenebrous, this production recalls the rapt wonder in Littler’s definitive All’s Well of 2019 at Guildford and Jermyn Street: except that sported two upright pianos, this one grand. A third of its six-strong cast (Bednarczyk, Robert Mountford) return here. Littler refuses the bleakest vision, though suggests bottled sunshine that might break. Several quit this fragile enchantment.

Tom Kanji’s Duke Orsino is imperious, not impervious, capricious with his musician. This Orsino is troubled though clear-headed and Saturnine-voiced. Nevertheless Viola (Patricia Allison) confuses feelings; though for Viola the conflict is not telling him hers. Consoling Orsino for his Olivia-shaped infatuation, Viola impulsively places her hand on his back. Kanji writhes slightly under the charm of Allison’s disguise.

Chemistry grows slowly. Allison rather briskly dispatches her realisation Olivia loves her in an authentically gamine fashion. Possibly a few too many words have been cut to give Allison the right purchase. Though her Cesario is wholly believable: quick-witted, outwardly confident, thrilling Olivia in a blaze of misguided rhetoric. This Viola though is perhaps too much Patience to her Cesario, takes time to break out. When Allison does, she radiates Viola’s words like small pulsars.

If the Orange Tree has a resident deity, it’s probably Dorothea Myer-Bennett. Her Olivia brings notes of an imperiously playful Titania, just within the bounds of decorum, then not quite. Her dispatch with Feste, her rapid fall for Cesario proves she’s in love with their words and this is also a play about words, and music. Myer-Bennett mainlines fluttering sexual excitement, horror (faced with Malvolio’s garb), bewilderment as Sebastian turns into Cesario; and her ecstatic “Most wonderful!” at the denouement caps the most supercharged Olivia I’ve seen. She glows white with love enough for the whole quartet.

Indeed Myer-Bennett’s transition from black to high-white wedding-dress marks collective rebirth after mourning weeds. It’s a premature spring for Olivia perhaps, unless enjoying intelligent but surely not as witty Sebastian makes up for it. This Olivia palpably sizes up differences, gazing from twin to twin. That’s after – like Viola – being last to see what’s happened. She embraces what she has.

Sebastian (Tyler-Jo Richardson, in a striking stage debut) also resembles Allison; this is just one virtue. Richardson is alert to both Antonio (a brooding but decisive Corey Montague-Sholey) and prepared to kiss him affectionately. Unlike the current Globe All’s Well, there isn’t a fully-fledged bisexual relationship; but Sebastian in his tenderness plays with fire. Richardson’s rapidly apprehending Sebastian shows him a worthy, quick-witted sibling. Montague-Sholey is given less to develop, though turns hurt with assurance, rescue with a shot pheasant crashing down, and defiance at Orsino with an incisive cool. Revealingly it’s Cesasrio who strikes off his chains.

Littler carefully gradates the young lovers and their dependents. Against them a trio of Sir Toby (a twinkling, medal-flashing Clive Francis) has clearly wished to end mourning for some time: his reward is marriage. Francis is a delight, and with Malvolio (Oliver Ford Davies), and Maria (Jane Asher), the chamber music of wit – winking at words – he conducts a trio from another aesthetic. Vocally they’re a timeless delight. Littler counterpoints the older at their fullest, the young bursting to dispatch it all.

If Francis’s Belch is kindly uproarious, Asher’s Maria projects a pert Cockney who despite herself gets pulled in as they crowd the piano with Feste, or duck as Ford Davies appears. With cut parts Maria delivers her own excuse and Asher enjoys gently facing down Myer-Bennett, with respectful lack of remorse. There’s terrific audience participation as each of these and Sir Andrew (Mountford) escape to sit with the audience.

Ford Davies’ Malvolio clutching a teddy bear elicits pity, Poloniusing his way till that terrible smile; lets in sunshine painfully hilarious, fifty years late with the wrong woman. There’s little malice, more baffled sense that butlering, his world of degree is ending. Bitterness erupts in his final exchange with Feste; self-banishment (suitcased along with Andrew and Antonio) the only possibility.

Mountford’s the outlier. Younger than this Belch, he brings sighs with his “I was adored… once” but also laughter skulking in the gallery bleating “Hobnob!” Mountford’s timing excels itself with theatre business, as tin-helmeted he pratfalls cowardice. Or takes down Viola’s wooing-notes, or asks Francis what C.U.T means, or occasionally the audience.

There are limitations: the piano hinders a physical flourishing of love’s confusion, and the letter-scene. But against that there’s Bednarczyk’s ring-tone chord, and tumble of actors asking pardon of audience members as they take a hand or seat. Above all with his spellbinding cast Littler again brings an intimate, wintry music to middle Shakespeare: it’s his unique gift. Never sour, never sweet without salt, and with those very few reservations, a definitive close-up Twelfth Night. Outstanding.

Sound Designer  Matt Eaton, Movement Director Julia Cave, Casting Director Matilda James CDG

Production & Technical Director Phil Bell, Senior Production Technician Andrew Owen Cook, Production Technician Priya Virdee, CSM Jade Gooch, DSM Lisa Cochrane, ASMs Nancy O’Melia, Naomi Shanson (cover), Production Electrician Chris Galler, Scenic Painter Sophie Firth, Seda Sokmen, Costume Support Emma Kylmala, Rehearsal & Production Photography Ellie Kurttz

Thanks to Thornhill Pianos and all those who contributed names of loved ones for the memorial in the design

Published November 30, 2024December 2, 2024 by Simon Jenner