The cast of the Movement Theatre Company's Twelfth Night
Review: Twelfth Night
James Goffin
Monday, January 23, 2012
11:23 PM
Shakespeare’s plays are often crudely divided between comedies and tragedies; the director of this latest production of Twelfth Night clearly didn’t get that memo.
Norwich-educated Rory Attwood has taken the themes of inversion within the play to an extreme and while it still ends with three weddings, it feels more like a funeral. Pretty much all the way through.
Out goes the ribald farce, replaced with moody looks, silences, and self-love masking self-loathing. He can’t quite get rid of Malvolio’s yellow stockings, but the rest of the production looks like a cross between minimalist Beckett and Withnail and I.
It leaves the play flat and depressing, with a first half that lumbers along suffocating in its own perverse misery. It does at least commit to its cause.
The text itself redeems the second-half, forced into comedy by the action on stage. Laurie Coldwell as Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek fights against the tide with good timing and fabulous facial expressions, and Caroline Haines is a nicely drawn Maria.
Ben Blyth plays every side of Malvolio with skill and Toby Parker-Rees’ Feste and Tom Hartill’s Belch support well, but the whole cast is playing with one hand tied behind their backs.
The programme notes claim that Twelfth Night is usually allowed to “collapse into out-and-out comedy partly because comedy is easier”. It isn’t. Comedy - done well - is terrifically difficult, and sometimes tradition gets it right.
Twelfth Night or What You Will runs nightly at the Norwich Playhouse at 7.30pm until Wednesday.
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3 comments
Its depressing how little reviewers these days bother to research their critique. Shakespeare plays are NEVER divided simply into comedies and tragedies and to imply that to explore the subtle nuances of either is somehow a failing is somewhat puzzling. (ref. didn't get the memo? this doesn't make sense.) The show also in know way resembled a Beckett play, is the reviewer aware of this? Also, comedy IS easy. Particularly farce, and if thats what you are seeking from the theatre, why on earth would you see a Shakespeare play?! My friends and I were delighted to see the motivations and frailties that drove establish characters with plenty of subtler and cleverer laughs along the way. To not play for laughs in fact made it funnier and was a significantly harder choice. We particularly loved Olivia's, Sir Toby's and Orsino's portrayal, bucking some conventional trends to give us much more interesting rounded characters. We certainly would see this company again, and are glad that at least somewhere Shakespeare is being challenged in the way he deserves.
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Audience Member 19
Monday, January 30, 2012
Don't worry merrydancer, my comments had already been partly censored. The main thrust of my argument was that these sort of reviews are all very well in say the west endbroadway where there are plenty of alternatives if a play is deemed poor. If audiences are put off and don't go, these tours wont come to Norwich or simply wont survive. Audiences can't exactly go to the alternative Shakespeare productions or similar which they could in a bigger city.
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Adam Dann
Thursday, January 26, 2012
This is a very misleading review. I also saw the performance and find the comments of the play being flat and depressing completely untrue. I believe I have read other reviews of Shakespeare productions by this critic before and also utterly disagreed.
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Adam Dann
Tuesday, January 24, 2012