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. Genuinely enjoyable is Zubin Varla who brings intelligence and a gypsyish otherness to the role of Feste. Indira Varma, a gorgeously svelte Olivia, finds something gravely sexy in the part of the saint-turned-nympho. Christopher Oram’s visual work is handsome and sometimes magnificent. The stylish costumes are loosely located in the 1920s and his set designs culminate in an exquisite stage picture of Olivia, swan-like in a black dress, seated on a pale gull-winged sofa. This is as strikingly lovely a tableau as I can recall seeing. Lavish effects can be brought off without lavish expense. Good fabrics, a painterly eye, strong flowing contours. That’s all you need. Students of design should pay the few quid it costs for an upper circle seat and take copious notes. While they’re at it they can relish Derek Jacobi’s star turn as Malvolio. What a strange disjointed role this is, hardly a character at all, more a Picasso scribble with three aspects: steely Puritan, soft besotted dupe, raging victim. The first thing Jacobi makes plain is that Malvolio is much funnier at the start, when he’s unfunny, than later on when the plot compels him to be absurd. The puerile follies of the second phase are duly tackled, the yellow stockings, the ‘cross-gartered’ business, the smiling. And Jacobi succeeds here, prompting real laughter from the stalls, not through any native comic brilliance (he’s never been noted as a comic), but through sheer willpower and expertise, through absolute mastery of the space. Knowing him only from telly I found it oddly moving to sit just a few small yards from him, to feel that light deep tenderness he has, that sad fluting liquidity. Mind you, I still couldn’t discover any love for this daft play.
Sean Holmes has pulled off a near-perfect revival of Loot in which Joe Orton treats authority to a delicious mauling. ‘The British police force used to be run by men of integrity,’ says Fay, a tear-stricken murderess. ‘That is a mistake which has been rectified.’ Doon Mackichan is exuberantly skilful as Fay, switching in an instant from scheming lust to chilly virtue. David Haig brings himself nicely to the boil as Truscott. And McCleavy, a very tough role to make sympathetic, is done with dogged brilliance by James Hayes. Loving touches abound in this production. When Haig grandly reveals himself as ‘Truscott of the Yard’ he expects gasps of astonishment and is greeted by silence. McCleavy’s narcolepsy after the hearse-crash is an excellent addition and his portrait of the pontiff is, as the script specifies, ‘three popes out of date.’ One quibble. Doon Mackichan’s brunette coiffe robs the play of one of its best lines. ‘God is a gentleman. He prefers blondes.’ Otherwise, a joy.
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