Enchanted evening

Twelfth Night
Wyndhams

Loot
Tricycle

Another stunna from Michael Grandage. His production of Twelfth Night is an excellent and often beautiful frivolity and if you’re a fan of the play it’s a must-see event. I can’t stand the thing, I’m afraid, and even this fine production doesn’t mask the script’s shortcomings. The ploy involving Olivia’s counterfeit passion for Malvolio is far too heavily signalled to work. The yellow stockings, the ‘cross-gartered’ business, the smiling. Has that ever really tickled the stalls? I doubt it. The fuse of surprise, vital to any comic detonation, is missing. Once the plotters’ trap is set it comes off with perfect success which isn’t just theatrically uninventive (or boring if you prefer) it also violates poetic justice. The pranksters are rewarded at the very moment when your sympathies have transferred from them, in their malice, to the victims, in their innocence. And the romantic plot-strand has a happy ending which is, psychologically, complete nonsense. Two pairs of virtual strangers pledge eternal love to each other. Someone should write a sequel, Thirteenth Night, with all the newlyweds in urgent talks with lawyers.

Another difficulty is that Shakespeare wrote two key parts, Belch and Aguecheek, for actors who were first-rate clowns. I deduce this from the fact that he didn’t give them anything funny to say. So to make it work you need what Shakespeare had, ace comedians. Here we get Ron Cook (Belch) and Guy Henry (Aguecheek) who are comically proportioned, one giant, one titchy, and they trot around the stage energetically enough like a basket-ball player being walked by his dwarf. Are they funny? Well, they chortled a lot so at least someone thought so. Admittedly, plenty of people in the stalls around me were chuckling as well but it was £32-a-ticket chuckling rather than the unsullied natural stuff.