The Odyssey, London Bubble, Sydenham Wells Park, 10th July 2009.

The Bubble’s cheerful hodge podge of ideas and concepts, with a healthy disregard for the father of Western literature, has created a summer show that is utterly charming. Using a tongue-in-cheek on-stage representation of Homer himself (Eric MacLennan in a natty hat) narrating his story with the help of an excellent ensemble cast and supporting chorus of Playmobile people, the Bubble lead the audience around the various South London parks on a magical journey from Calypso’s island back to Ithaca.

The atmosphere was wonderfully exuberant, with almost the whole audience composed of families, and this witty production worked on enough levels to keep tots, teenagers and adults entertained. There is something magical about being outside at dusk, and the Bubble know how to marry story to landscape to keep that magic palpable throughout. Following such a talented bunch of actors around a darkening park has lost none of its allure since I was a very small girl, and the whole production encourages us to remember what was best about being a kid. There were times when my squeals of delight were almost indistinguishable from those of the toddler next to me, although mine were far more dignified, obviously. The enjoyment of the children in the audience is a testament to the power of storytelling and of the company. The ensemble cast, who all play multiple roles as well as singing and playing Martina Schwartz’s well judged-music, were great, and clearly as pleased as the audience that the Bubble is back - and that it didn’t rain. The switching between parts was done neatly and without confusion, partly thanks to Jane Linz Roberts’s clever, unpretentious costumes - Athene in her flying goggles cut a particular dash.

The sets were simple but effective, as they have to be given the promenade nature of the show, and the fact that it tours different parks. The Odyssey is a pretty complex narrative to follow (full of flashbacks and stories within the story), so it is of huge credit to the cast, director (Jonathan Petherbridge) and script (Simon Startin) that the audience was too entranced to misbehave. The script itself was beautiful: true, funny and poetic, while rattling along fast enough to get our eponymous hero halfway across the world in under three hours. To take such a huge story and make it work dramatically is a big ask, and Startin’s script fulfils its brief wonderfully.

Eva Alexander was a wonderfully reserved Penelope, and played well off her tense son, Telemachus (Nicholas Goode). The parent-child relationship was further explored in the interactions between Daniel Copeland’s hearty Zeus and his wayward daughter, Athene (Grethe Jensen). Odysseus naturally has to carry the show, and Gwilym Lloyd’s broad shoulders were more than up to the job. He was at his best when most vulnerable, half dead, half naked, lost and alone far from home. The rest of the ensemble were versatile and made an excellent supporting cast - although I found Becky Barry’s Nausicaa slightly, well, wet. The stage managers do a marvelous job of getting everything in place, as well as masterfully shepherding the audience from one scene to the next.
All in all, this was a fabulous evening, from a company that has brought more magic into South London than many people would believe possible. The Bubble is back, and I’m confident that I’m not the only person rejoicing.

An Inspector Calls, Cambridge Arts Theatre, 14th May 2009.

Having seen this production when I was studying ‘An Inspector Calls’ for GCSE (which, bizarrely, didn’t destroy it for me), I was curious to see it again with the eyes of a more experienced and jaded theatregoer. I never experienced the initial joy of seeing the play unfold without knowing what was going to happen (a rare pleasure - I read too much), but the stunning set was surprising enough. This is exactly the same Stephen Daldry production, but transported from the rather grand Olivier stage to the much smaller Arts Theatre. The imposing house was rather less impressive from the back row of the stalls, where the underside of the circle cut off the top third, and it all looked slightly cramped. This should not detract from what was a solid production, though.

The Birling family were all good, especially Eric (Robin Whiting), who portrayed young and helpless and disgusted with himself very well. The wild disarray of his costume by the end of the play reflected the disarray of his mental state, and his self-loathing was deep without being worthy. Sheila (Marianne Oldham) came across earnestly and charted the progression from giggly naïf to self-loathing adult excellently. Mr Birling (David Roper) had just the right mixture of bombast and fragility. He was clearly terrified of a scandal, and yet was still a swaggering bully both within his family and in his professional life. There was a clear sense of being nouveau riche and very aware of it - never more so than when the cut-glass tones of his rather better off wife prompted him to do or say something he should have done without prompting. Mrs Birling (Sandra Duncan) was intensely dislikeable, which I mean as a complement. However, it did make it harder to sympathise with her pitiful, snivelling downfall towards the end, with dishevelled hair and dress covered with a brown blanket. Gerald (Alisdair Simpson) was a trifle nondescript, which I think is as much a fault of the play as the actor. He isn’t given much to go on in terms of dialogue, and his part in Eva/Daisy’s death is arguably the smallest, so there is less room for emotional turmoil and depth to be explored.

In spite of the restricted view, I adored the set. Its use of levels, with the upper classes forced to come down to Inspector Goole’s level, is inspired, and the metaphor remains subtle enough to only improve Priestley’s dismemberment of upper-middle-class airs and graces. Edna was a superb, constant embarrassing presence for the Birlings, and managed to convey a huge amount with the smallest of gestures. The fall of the house of Birling was beautifully done (spoiler alert), and there was a very clever ‘picking up the pieces’ scene when the senior Birlings and Gerald gather up their shattered self-belief and sense of humour while crunching across shards of their crockery and glassware

I was not overly impressed with the actual inspector. Although he had a good presence for a small man, and used his body and physicality to intimidate and probe, I found his diction very odd. He was presumably directed to do so, but he emphasised odd words in a phrase and put in overly long and rather bizarrely timed pauses - not leading to increased dramatic effect, unless the desired effect was bewilderment. The script is strong enough, however, that the relentless hounding of the Birlings and search for the truth overrode any small niggles. It is easy to see why this production has run and run.

Kafka’s Monkey, Young Vic Studio, 28th March 2009.

This 40-minute one-woman show was one of the most arresting and disturbing pieces of theatre I have seen. Kathryn Hunter was superb as Red Peter, the monkey who apes humans in order to escape from captivity. She was frighteningly flexible, and managed to lumber around the stage, knuckles scraping the ground, with the kind of grace one would expect from a real animal. The hours she has spent studying monkeys’ movement have paid off. It was incredible, but this tiny woman in a baggy tuxedo just was a monkey, from her hesitant entrance clutching a suitcase to her shuffling exit.

Kafka’s story is short, and highly satirical, mocking the gap that humans like to put between themselves and animals. Red Peter learns first by mimicking the sailors who have captured him, and soon learns to spit and drink rum - thus, according to Kafka, attaining the level of the average European. Ouch. This is not comfortable stuff to watch, and I don’t just mean Hunter’s effortless splits. Colin Teevan’s adaptation pulls no punches, and the audience are made complicit in the suffering of Red Peter as fellow human beings. The audience, referred to throughout as “members of the academy”, are treated as the audience of a lecture, which Peter is delivering, on how he became human. Hunter brilliantly captures a creature who is now neither one thing nor the other: despite repeated assurances that Peter could not return to his previous state even if he wanted to, there are many lapses in his human behaviour - picking fleas from a well-dressed lady in the front row, for example. Walter Meierjohann has directed delicately, emphasising the animalistic tendencies of the humanised monkey. The bleakness with which Peter views his new life throws human values and the trappings of civilised society into stark relief, and his descriptions of copulating with a female of his species for the sake of forgetting for a short while are desperately sad.

The piece is necessarily short, Hunter may seem super-human but she was clearly exhausted by the end, and the original story is not long. However, it packs more into those forty minutes than many plays do in three hours. It is as good a test of a playwright’s craft as the short story is of the novelist, and Kafka and Teevan both come out of this production flying high. The star, of course, is Hunter, who gives a truly stunning performance as Red Peter. Her physical transformation, from spiky haircut to prehensile toes, was astonishing, and her careful speech and quiet dignity made it all-to-easy to see the small step from monkey to human.

Waiting for Godot, Norwich Theatre Royal, 11th April 2009.

Well, what can I say? I’m not one to gush, but this was just so utterly fabulous that gushing may be inevitable. After trekking round Norwich in the rain (note to Norwich-dwellers: turning signposts so that they face the wrong way is not funny) you could understand if our spirits has been dampened, but the traditional plush red seats and palpable sense of excitement in the theatre soon helped us forget our damp feet. The set, framed by a particularly fine proscenium arch so that you felt as though you were being given glimpse into another world, was stunningly gothic. A bleak, brick wall made the backdrop, with the ruins of another wall in front. This was a world that no-one cared about, peopled by people that could have been there forever. Estrogen and Vladimir were simultaneously as much part of the landscape as the tree that has thrust its way through the floor, and as incongruous. Ian McKellen’s Gogo enters crawling out of unseen ditch, trembling hands first, followed by Patrick Stewart’s Didi. The two are utterly dependent on each other, and these two giants of the stage shrank to be almost overshadowed by the lowering and unfriendly set. It was easy to believe that these two had spent fifty years in each other’s company, and it quickly became impossible to imagine one without the other. Beckett’s elliptical writing kept them tied to the place and to each other, without an over-arching sense of time to keep them grounded. Their forgetfulness and anxiety keep the audience from ever getting too settled, and I wouldn’t have minded waiting for Godot a whole lot longer, such was the power of these performances.

Simon Callow was wonderful as a rather fruity, booming Pozzo, haranguing the hapless Lucky (Ronald Pickup). Pickup’s long monologue was delivered at such a speed as to be nearly unintelligible, but that is perhaps more a fault of the words themselves than the actor. He was melancholy enough to make McKellen’s lacrimose Gogo seem cheerful, and Lucky’s dancing made the rather decrepit Gogo and Didi look sprightly. McKellen’s Gogo was gruff and grumpy and helpless, deeply dependent on Stewart’s slightly more upbeat Didi, and their mutual affection was very touching. The intrusion of the colourful, brash Pozzo into the monochrome, quietly grumbling, hermetic world of Didi and Gogo was as shocking for the audience as for the characters. The relationship between McKellen and Stewart was so understated and poignant that I resented the interruption to their interminable waiting, as it upset the delicate balance they had created to get through each day. The interaction between the four was masterfully choreographed, and the visual jokes stayed on the right side of slapstick while still making the most of every movement, aided by beautifully sarcastic and caustic inflection. Sean Mathias has created a world that fits seamlessly around Beckett’s words - in this world the repetitive, sometimes nonsensical words fit, and make sense in the mouths of the characters. Paul Groothuis’s sound excellently highlighted the action (if you can call it action), and the piano music was well-chosen. I was not a fan of the comedy sound effects in places, although I must admit that they made me giggle. The inevitability of it all, the vain discussion of suicide, the fact that nothing happens present a huge challenge to a director who has to engage an audience for almost three hours, but this production managed with ease.

Ballet Black, Cambridge Arts Theatre, 15th March 2009.

A stunning evening of ballet that mixed contemporary with traditional, this was dance that made me miss dancing, forgetting about the pain and the darning of pointe shoes. The show opened with ‘Hinterland’, choreographed by Liam Scarlett. It was dazzling, exciting, colourful, playful, and made excellent use of the six dancers. As a company, these six seem to be very comfortable together, able to dance was exuberantly and to project their joy of movement to the audience. Scarlett’s dance was bursting with life and fun, and remained witty without becoming trite, vibrant while remaining effortless. The Fosse-like close choric movement was brilliantly done without becoming a pastiche, and the breakout moves back into the whirlwind dance were fantastically effective. Shostakovich’s lively and exhilarating piano music was the perfect accompaniment, without ever distracting from the dance.

The second piece, ‘Pendulum’, was a combative duet, by Martin Lawrance. Every movement had beautiful tension, pride and passion. The accompanying percussive static gradually became faster and louder, and the dancers were equal to it and bigger than it. They fought both each other and the music, occasionally teetering on the edge of violence. The piece was raw and edgy, which a wonderful sense of gathering momentum and the crescendo to the climax did not disappoint.

‘Kinderszenen’ by Antonia Franceschi was my least favourite piece, but I’m finding it difficult to put my finger on exactly why. The steps were accomplished, the dancers poised, polished and athletic, but somehow the disparate elements failed to make a convincing whole. The playfulness of the dance came across well, helped by Allen Shawn’s light-hearted music, but despite some lovely moments, (especially the sudden stillness), it failed to capture me. It grew on me as it went on and each of the separate parts was nice, but there was too much going on onstage, too much fuss. I acknowledge that working with six dancers is tricky, but there was no sense of cohesion in this piece, and the many entrances and exits distracted from the dance. It must be said that even the most graceful dancer cannot make balletic running look less silly than it is.

The final piece, ‘Depouillement’, by Will Tuckett, was a stunning end to the evening. The brilliant, monochromatic ensemble work made excellent use of the whole company. I loved the fluidity and democracy of the dancers, and the pairings, trios, quartets, solos and quintets they mixed and matched within the six of them. Particularly striking were the moments when the three male dancers moved in tight unison, the use of two couples contrasted with a single figure, and the use of wonderful clean lines. Tuckett has made it seem as though Ravel’s music has been written to fit the steps, rather than the other way around. I can think of no higher compliment to pay to a choreographer. A tender and more traditional pas de deux made a nice break in the piece, but the passion and beauty of whole was in the sheer joy emanating from the whole ensemble. I knew the dancers were tired, but wanted them to continue. I was actually breathless at the end, never mind the dancers themselves.

David Plater’s lighting was the perfect accompaniment, enhancing the dancers, especially when they were silhouetted. I don’t normally notice lighting specifically, but this was so clever, so subtle, and so right for the performance, that it deserved a mention. I was less keen on the costumes, which seemed unnecessarily twee given the raw energy and talent of the dance and the dancers, but they were at least designed so that the lines of the bodies were clear. The fact that all six dancers were stunningly beautiful helped, too. Here is a company of hugely talented dancers working with choreographers who will push them and develop the savage beauty of ballet.

Midsummer Night’s Dream – Oxford Playhouse, 17th Oct 2007.

From upside down acrobatics to a paper set, from neon costumes to Puck’s skimpy loin-cloth, from attempted rape to happy-ever-after, Supple’s production boiled down to sex and violence. It really emphasised the violence in the play, which created an interesting juxtaposition with its physicality and beauty. Hermia, Helena and Titania were all dragged around the stage by the various menfolk, and there was a very fine line between rolling on the floor in the throes of passionate mutual love and rolling on the floor in a desperate attempt to escape rape. What was particularly interesting in this production was how quickly the animalistic nature of the lovers took over once they had left the court. It is easy to argue that once enchanted by Puck or Oberon the characters’ actions are not their own and they cannot therefore be blamed, but in Supple’s staging of the play Demetrius attempts to rape Helena before any spells have been cast on him, to reassert his dominance over her when she refuses to leave him alone. An interesting dynamic is then raised, with Helena’s ‘spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me, only give me leave, unworthy as I am, to follow you’ taking on a dark, almost masochistic, significance, and Demetrius’s threat of ‘mischief in the wood’ is all too likely to come true.

As a theatrical experience the play was faultless; exuberant, entertaining and exhilerating. It was both fantastic and fantastical. It was sexy. However, some of the characters (and I’m thinking especially of the lovers here) were not particularly well fleshed out. This didn’t matter because the play as a whole was enchanting and entirely convincing in its unreality, but there were moments when some of the nuances of character were lost, overpowered by the visual feast. This may have been partly a language problem, too, as the play is performed in seven languages, with English spoken for about half. This naturally adds to the confusion both of characters and audience, and emphasises the ‘otherness’ of the wood. It also served excellently to highlight the confusion of those bewitched by love-juice or those in conflict, as often an actor would speak in one langauge and get a reply in another. Clearly in such a multi-lingual production the visuals take on immense importance, and Supple’s production did not disappoint. The first entrance of the fairies, bursting through paper-covered scaffolding, was breath-taking and their consequent high-rise acrobatics lead one to believe that they really were immortal beings. Titania’s red sleeping cocoon suspended high above the stage was beautiful but strange – epitomising the production and, indeed, the play.

Having suggested that the lovers were perhaps a little 2-D against such a vibrant backdrop, I must stress that this is not a criticism of the actors. One production is never going to be able to capture every variant of the play, and this one more than compensated in its glorious colour and exuberance. The mechanicals were earnest enough to be touching not just hilarious, and their Pyramus and Thisbe did not deserve as much mockery as the court gave it. Bottom was fabulously crude, and yet maintained a certain dignity throughout – although I maintain that his phallic vegetable should have had its own billing. The entire cast worked as a fabulously well-oiled machine, wich was just as well given that there were ample opportunities for mishap – hanging gymnastics, stick-fighting, dance. The whole piece was bursting with colour and life, and the choreography and movement successfully contrasted the restrained Athenian court with the unrestrained and magical woods. The play was perhaps more spectacle than substance, but done with such style and panache that the audience were blown away.

Seven Jewish Children, ADC Larkum Studio, 5th March 2009.

Churchill has drawn some pretty clear battle lines, not only through the title of the play, but also through its epigraph: a play for Gaza. Not about Gaza, for Gaza. I’m not going to get into a pro/anti-Israel debate, but I think there needs to be a clear distinction between being anti-Israel, anti-violence, anti-militarism, or anti-Semitic. ‘Seven Jewish Children’ is firmly in the first three camps, but emphatically not in the last. More to the point, even if it were (and I am speaking as a Jew, here), it should still be given theatrical space.

However, for all the furore surrounding the premiere of Caryl Churchill’s new play at the Royal Court, this was more storm in a teacup than full-blown hurricane. Not only was it not anti-Semitic, it was also not much more than an angry first draft. The small ensemble cast were mixed, with some excellent, serious actors mixed in with some over-enthusiastic thesps taking themselves and their subject matter too seriously. The joy of Churchill’s play is that the lines are unattributed, giving unusual directorial freedom. In this instance, the director had made some interesting decisions about how to divide up the lines effectively, creating several small family units. The whole play discusses what to tell or not tell an unnamed ‘her’ who, it is implied, is a young Jewish child. I would suggest that the direction here was a little self-righteous, and although the play had some important things to say it was effectively a glorified first draft. I am all for power of immediacy, but I cannot get away from the fact that this play would have been hugely improved by a period of reflection and re-writing by Churchill before she released it to the world. It was an interesting, intense and often uncomfortable 10 minutes, which is presumably what she was going for, but with the benefit of time it could have been so much more.

Given the torrent of stuff written about this play, here are the links to some other people’s thoughts: Andrew Haydon, Charlotte Higgins, Martin Beckford, Terri Judd, Lyn Gardner, Michael Billington, Dominic Maxwell, and the ever delightful Melanie Phillips.

Romeo and Juliet, Cambridge Arts Theatre, 4th March 2009.

A cunning switch in the prologue from “two hours traffic of the stage” to “three hours traffic of the stage”, stuck fear into my heart. Any messing around with the text tends to set my teeth on edge, and this was not the most auspicious start to this otherwise powerful and delicate production. The looming arches of the set effortlessly became street, feast-hall, balcony, tomb, and the red shading into white was an eerie foreshadowing of what was to come. The production was slick and polished, without losing its charm, and a talented cast clearly trusted their director and believed in what they were saying and doing.

The cast were sometimes too quiet to be heard from row P, and a restless audience of schoolchildren (I’m guessing R&J is a GCSE set text) gave them a hard time. I felt sorry for Paris (Adam Drew), whose dramatic but well-acted death drew giggles. Perhaps 14-year-olds have a hard time with pathos. I was actually moved to tears by Juliet’s (Lucy Evans) death, which a first. Her brilliant, breathless portrayal of Juliet as an occasionally petulant child made the tragedy of her death all the more poignant. The decision to have Romeo and Juliet both play very young was mostly effective, and served to make their deaths extra sad, but it did come up against some problems, most notably in the portrayal of their love. They were played so young that the supposed depth of their love was difficult to believe, but these two fine actors carried the play.

The cast had some cross-over with the Hamlet I saw a couple of weeks ago, and the improvements were remarkable, really showing the skill of Charlotte Westenra as a director. She managed to coax an intelligent and subtle performance from Jack Monaghan’s Romeo, and Catriona Cahill (who was a wooden and unengaging Gertrude) was superbly ribald as the nurse. Georgia Sams was overly hysterical as Lady Capulet, and Ed Rice as Capulet found it hard to tread the line between fond father and stern patrician, meaning that his violent outbursts were surprising for the wrong reasons, but generally speaking the cast were great. Particularly of note was James Walker’s mercurial Mercutio, well cast against Joey Batey’s gentle Benvolio (who again, was far better in this show than as Laertes). Harry Adamson was an imposingly grave Friar Laurence, and Rob Carter was a fiercely angry and impetuous Tybalt.

The play opened well, at a decent pace, and Westenra really brought out the humour. It lagged by the end of the first half, particularly as we had been warned to expect three hours-worth, but the second half was well-judged and kept the pace fast enough to maintain engagement without rushing Romeo and Juliet’s painful goodbye, Romeo’s banishment, or the final denouement. The fights were snappy and well done, not as stagey as most, er, stage fights, and choreography was frighteningly realistic. Wastenra’s interpretation was considered and intelligent. This production totally lacked a reliance on gimmicks or melodrama, and instead presented a clear, calm, and strong take on the play, while allowing the inherent tragedy to play out without obstruction.

Othello, Warwick Arts Centre, 31/01/09

This production was so keen to emphasise the racism of the play that, in some places, it lost sight of the rest of the text. Director Kathryn Hunter was sitting in front of me scribbling away for the whole performance, so perhaps it will pick up - I hope it just had teething problems. It certainly had problems.
Patrice Naiambana’s (Othello) accent was all over the place, the ensemble work was sloppy, and it was self-indulgently long despite some hefty cuts. Emilia’s wonderful speech denouncing men was cut so short that it lost all of its power, an odd decision given that Desdemona was not a fragile, subservient little thing. In fact, Natalia Tena in her RSC debut was fantastic, and held her own on a big, spare set despite her frail physique.

I liked the set, with its two movable arches that came together and moved apart to become a Venetian bridge, a balcony, barracks, ships. Although the manoeuvring could have done with more rehearsal as the stage hands were a distraction, it was visually very effective. Less effective were the smaller props, screens used to make walls, waves, doorways, which were reminiscent of an A-level drama production. The murder scene, and the billowing sheets and dream-sequence, also belonged in an school production rather than being worthy of the RSC. What could have been a very powerful image, the small figure of Desdemona in a sea of white sheets, was made rather silly by the decision to have the sheets billow and ripple.

Musically, the show was excellent, with a lovely mix of styles performed live on stage by a wonderful group of musicians. The mix of very specifically African music with English was interesting, and made the point about racial difference far more effectively than any of the more blatant, visual ideas. The soldiers’ barracks on Cyprus hosts a black-and-white minstrels type cabaret, complete with golliwog and grotesque white doll used to represent Desdemona. However, the obvious respect that the soldiers have for their commander was at odds with the blatant disrespect shown to him in private, and Hunter did not explore this duplicity further. This brought the idea of race right to the forefront of the drama, and then rather than run with, Hunter just abandoned it, so that it obscured rather than revealing.

Michael Gould’s Iago has been praised elsewhere, but I thought him pantomimic. The way he leered and plotted, it was unbelievable that Othello and others could continue to call him “honest Iago”. For the deceit to work, the actor must convey two sides to the character’s personality, and it should have been clear to everyone that Iago was hell-bent on destroying Othello. That said, Naiambana’s Othello was strong on nobility and militarism, weak on emotion. While his love for Desdemona was well portrayed, the character was flat, and his fit was almost comically bad. Marcello Magni’s Roderigo was foolish and petulant, and although he hammed it up rather too much for my taste, he got a lot of laughs, and provided a nice contrast to Gould’s alternately dour and camp Iago.

For such a fine actor, Hunter has made some odd decisions and failed to bring the best out of her performers. Bring on Lenny Henry in April.

Twelfth Night, Wyndham’s Theatre, 12th Jan 2009

Derek Jacobi’s mincing, malevolent Malvolio was a constant malign presence behind the wooden slats of the set. The bare wooden boards of the stage and dappled lighting gave the place a breezy, summery feel. It put one in the mood for light comedy. While there were plenty of jokes, mainly in the form of Guy Henry and Ron Cook’s superb Little’n’Large pairing as Andrew and Toby (respectively), Grandage’s production had a darker side. Jacobi got perhaps more laughs than he deserved through the audience’s sheer delight at seeing him in the flesh, but it was when he howled like a wounded animal, trapped beneath the suddenly dark and claustrophobic stage that he shone. Credit is due to the Lighting Designer that they managed to make such an airy space shrink to a depressing, tomb-like prison for the beleaguered Malvolio.

Indira Varma was a beautiful, aloof Olivia, whose transformation into a 50s beauty in bathing suit and giant hat, panting with lust for Victoria Hamilton’s luckless Viola, was perhaps a little fast to be believable. But then, this is Shakespeare, where girls disguise themselves boys, the drowned are miraculously saved, and no-one has a clue about realism, anyway. Victoria Hamilton’s metamorphosis from mermaid-like beauty, plucked from the sea, into the neat, boyish page who ingratiates himself into Orsino’s (Mark Bonnar) court was rather more convincing, although still rapid. She beautifully captured Viola’s plight, torn between the difficulty she would face as a lone women if revealed as such and he desperate love for Orsino. Who is, in turn, petulantly in love with Olivia. Sigh. There was a lot of sighing, which made Samantha Spiro’s feisty and witty Maria a breath of fresh air. Using her sexuality and spunk to get ahead in life, and orchestrate the humiliation of Malvolio, she seemed fair too sensible for love, marrying for money instead.

The play tripped along nicely, despite being another 3-hr RSC extravaganza. The plain set never got boring, with an inventive use of the many entrances and exits, and a simple wind-breaker transporting the action from Court to beach was a very nice touch. The music was nicely done, too, and although Zubin Varla’s Feste was unusually melancholy, his singing voice was gorgeous. I was caught up enough in this charming production that I was genuinely pleased that the right couples ended up paired at the end, but found Jacobi’s vows of vengeance lacking in weight. He had perhaps invested too much to being a pantomime villain, which meant that his threats could be easily brushed off by the ‘goodies’. This was good, solid theatre with some bum notes and some flashes of brilliance.