FringeReview UK 2025

Twelfth Night

Chronicle Theatre Company

Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Comedy, Fringe Theatre, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: The Tabard, Turnham Green

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“What country, friends, is this?” Viola’s opening line ordinarily seems strange since there’s usually only the Captain with her. Here “friends” is gone and Viola’s alone. “This is Illyria. And what should I do in Illyria?” Welcome to Bill Alexander’s reduced 76-minute cut with cast of eight, in Chronicle Theatre’s production of Twelfth Night at The Tabard, Turnham Green also directed by Alexander till October 18.

Chronicle Theatre’s about to take this production to Switzerland, but Theatre in Education shouldn’t conjure anything worthy. Alexander, some cast and creatives worked with the RSC or major productions. Only vibrant younger actors are new: some presage extraordinary careers. As Guildford Shakespeare’s All’s Well directed by Tom Littler proved with a cast of six, a shorter, reduced-cast can produce the most insightful and for me the most outstanding production of that Shakespeare play I have ever seen. Cutting doesn’t mean a Reduced Shakespeare company. How does Alexander’s fare?

Harold Bloom wrote that Twelfth Night should be played at breakneck speed, which can work, with pauses. Yet this production, 15 minutes too short, allows eddies and currents of feeling, which is vital: it allows blood back into some drained pounds of flesh.  Martha Ibbotson’s Viola is achingly real, a slow burn suddenly frighted out of numbness and into desire meeting Jonny Wiles’ handsome Orsino. There’s tiny hesitations that reach longer as each encounter lengthens and forbidden love blossoms. First between Orsino, who uses the disguised boy-seeming Caesario (Viola) as go-between to the woman he thinks he loves, Eliza Horn’s Olivia.

Then Olivia’s rapid attraction to Caesario. Two kinds of same-sex desire as Viola is mistaken by both admirers for a boy. “A little thing would tell them what I lack of a man” Viola laments; there’s no little thing even as laughter dies: Ibbotson has already uttered “I am all the daughters of my father’s house.” She freights this with a poignancy that here even muddled Orsino can’t mistake as anything other than a feminised boy declaring a kind of love; even though her ‘sister “never told her love”. Looks jerk fractionally between Ibbotson and Wiles so Orsino’s later “partly” realising Caesario’s love is prepared for. Ibbotson’s explosion of grief at the climax is the production’s beating heart.

Wiles is splendidly romantic, without the hollow dark that makes Orsino unsympathetic. Indeed he’s more an open-hearted Sebastian, though makes Orsino warm enough for once to deserve Viola, and this wonderful Viola too. You’ll believe them happy.

Horn too from hauteur to (um) horny here slowly sloughs reserves proper to a gentlewoman (some have her abandoned; here Horn shows amorous quivering in restraint). Horn drops her voice to a slight huskiness when aroused. It’s slight but telling. Here again emotions sink in; indeed Ibbotson’s half-amazed, half-dismayed wonder that she‘s aroused desire in this “marble-breasted” beauty. Horn’s a worthy lover of Ibbotson’s Caesario

As for the beauty’s household, there’s a delicious trio and outlier. Maria/Feste (Mary Chater), Sir Toby Belch (Rez Kabir), and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Jamie Newall). Maria, whom Bloom calls the most malicious in Twelfth Night, is here more benign, but still the brains. Add Feste’s role and it’s potentially a truly major part. Chater easily relishes the aplomb, rationale, and mischievous wit to bring off Maria. Her tormenting Feste-as-Sir Topaz lines are given sensibly to Belch (as he torments locked-up Malvolio), but otherwise the problem is that both roles are drastically cut down, leaving Chater cheated. It’s a great pity, as Chater has the tonal reach and timbre to swerve her doubleness.

Kabir’s Belch is never without others, so isn’t given to inwardness, but Kabir is splendid, ringing and a beautiful foil: both to Chater, with whom he enjoys the most amorous moments on stage (just about 12A for schools this!); and Newall. Who passes the hesitation in ”I was adored… once” test with soaring bathos, if there is such a thing. It draws a laugh but others might sigh. An exquisite music of pure idiocy flows between him and Kabir as they dance capers, though the astrological jokes are understandably cut and a silly jig vocalised instead.

There’s all sorts of fun around the beleaguered Ibbotson who here plays … Sebastian too. What on earth will happen when she has to divide herself? Naturally she and Horn enjoy a very different level of intimacy when solitary Sebastian’s only too willing to marry a beautiful woman who claims him straight off.  Sebastian’s only difference is a pair of shades.

These also disguise the hopeless Antonio (Robert Bouvier) whose part is relatively full, and of course unsatiated by the end. It seems cruel to not reward a genuine homoerotic passion (and some Sebastians swing both ways) but it’s as if Antonio, like Bassanio’s Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, is a kind of sacrifice to allow permissions elsewhere.  Bouvier’s accent makes him brooding and inward, his handsome presence more than a believable fighting man. Ibbotson’s fight choreographer too.

That outlier, John McAndrew’s Calvinist Malvolio is here realised with point and detail (save the cross-gartering, just yellow stockings) that index a genuinely repressed Puritan. His smiles, his reveal of those yellow stockings, the cleverness with which he thinks he hears voices and twice investigates which brings him to notice the fateful letter, are details masterfully pointed up. Only someone who’s directed six previous Twelfth Nights (some celebrated) can distil such actions. It’s telling. McAndrew is splendid, particularly with Horn and Chater. His smile is genuinely unnerving, his leap alarming. And we end, bitterly, abruptly on him. Which in this production, jars, because somehow Malvolio’s not been pent up enough for the production to earn the subtitle Malvolio. No reflection on the splendid McAndrew though.

“And what should I do in Illyria?/My brother he is in Elysium.” The trouble is, he is. When Viola can longer double Sebastian, the production uses a synch trick: superbly realised, but a cheat, and one of the reasons this production doesn’t quite matter enough: it’s a little too anaemic and sequential, with less build-up. Considering the qualities on show this seems strange. Some might object to the minimal set Lucy Fowler creates: a Palladian pink backdrop, three pub stools (lovely wink) and with Rajiv Pattani’s bluish tinged lighting. But these creatives aren’t celebrated for nothing, and do exactly what’s necessary. I don’t miss the lack of props. Sarah Sayeed’s flute-led music is attractive.

As for fitting school curriculae: a double period can encompass up to two hours and most schools make provision for a slightly longer take where necessary. Alexander hs this nearly right. Another actor is an expense. But we need them.

I’ve suggested some Shakespares can reduce to six with virtually no loss. Somehow it can’t sing here, or not calibrated as it is. Feste/Maria can absolutely work with some expansion. But however good Ibbotson is, we need Sebastian. One suggestion might be another woman of Ibbotson’s stature. Perhaps tripling Feste/Maria/Sebastian; since we lose Feste’s sanity at the end. Though we need it for a final bittersweet uplift to send out audiences: here they stumble off with “revenge” as a keyword. No. Spirit is violated. This is very nearly an exquisite production, though its lilies need tending.

Lucy Fowler as set and costume designer, Beth Qualter Buncall as costume supervisor, Sarah Sayeed as sound and music designer, Rajiv Pattani as lighting designer, Stefano Guerriero as stage manager, Martha Ibbotson as fight choreographer, Michela Riccardi as marketing manager, Collette Parker as production manager, Stefano Guerriero and Frida Cæcilia Rødbroe as covers. Produced by Jonny Wiles for Chronicle Theatre Company

Published October 15, 2025 by Simon Jenner