Viola's salt-soaked head pops up from a subterranean sea beneath the floorboards; Olivia is asleep perched precariously on a rickety stack of chairs; Orsino watches a flickering TV in the despair of the violet hour; somewhere, far away, a piano tinkles. A clock ticks as time, hopes and youth crumble to dust. "What country, friends, is this?"
Not a very happy one in David Farr's production that places Illyria in a decaying country house where the ceilings and walls have fallen away. It has been an autumn of Twelfth Nights, and Farr's production, exquisitely designed by Angela Davies, is the best-looking yet, surpassing even the recent Indian-style version in the West End. But, beguiling though it is to look at, as with the London production, this staging is often too much concept and not enough character.
With a few honourable exceptions - Charles Edwards' lovelorn Orsino, David Beames' watchful, excluded Antonio and Mark Lockyer's uptight, narcissistic Malvolio - you don't feel that you really know these people. They are blurred stereotypes, not sharply etched and vivid. Nikki Amuka Bird's Viola is never more than a sweet girl, Ian Lindsay's Irish Feste fails to bring a catch to your throat, and Sir Toby and friends are the rotary club leftovers of tradition. There are many good moments and Farr handles the comedy adeptly, but he relies too much upon the setting to provide the melancholic undertow of the play.
What he is good at, however, is showing how immaturity and love makes fools of us all. Orsino and Rakie Ayola's Olivia are reduced to either sulky or giggling children in love, and there is a lovely moment in the letter scene when the conspirators hide behind pot plants like toddlers who have covered their faces and therefore believe they can't be seen. More of this kind of detail and the show could be a cracker.
· Until November 20. Box office: 0117-987 7877.
