Twelfth Night
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon
 

A BLEAK, funereal setting constantly being touched up with black paint and later dominated by an oversized organ is James Cotterill’s unsettling design for a play that usually champions life and passion.

Director Prasanna Puwanarajah’s dark take on Shakespeare’s bittersweet comedy leans heavily on the bitter, especially where the original text is concerned, and much of the humour is an addition in the form of Feste’s extended clowning routines and modern asides.

It is no surprise that Freema Agyeman’s feisty and emotionally capricious Olivia has rejected Bally Gill’s self-absorbed Orsino and his protestations of love for the youthfully malleable charms of the cross-dressing Viola, Gwyneth Keyworth. In notable contrast to their showy, love-sick affectations is the selfless sincerity of the doomed passion expressed by ill-fated Antonio for the man he dragged from the sea, Sebastian.

Among the other characters Joplin Sibtain’s Sir Toby Belch is an out-an-out, selfish drunk, capable of real venom and hate and quite understandably rejected by Danielle Henry’s independent Maria despite contrary evidence in the text, while Demetri Goritsas plays Sir Andrew Aguecheek as if he was an extra from Guys and Dolls.

Samuel West’s reliably self-important and self-restrained Malvolio makes a surprisingly flamboyant entry from above in yellow stockings, but his final curse seems to fall on deaf ears in a largely colourless and self-absorbed world.

Michael Grady-Hall’s captivating Feste dominates much of the action with his jokey philosophising and typical clowning routines highlighting the absurdity of life and love as experienced by the other characters.

Despite featuring universally strong performances, this production does not fully hold together as if it is out of harmony with the original text. Despite the play’s satisfyingly unifying conclusion for the various narrative threads, Matt Maltese’s specially commissioned songs and the comic routines feel like additions rather than essential elements of the Illyrian world.

Twelfth Night should be a reliable staple for the festive season, with love and life emerging from the initial sense of heartbreak, but in Puwanarajah’s hands it remains a dark world where the transient flashes of light are merely distractions. Moments of visual absurdity with the servants add to the comedy but only go to emphasise the discordance of a production where “the wind and the rain” is allowed to dominate.

Runs until January 18, box office: rsc.org.uk