It seems fitting that the handsomely refurbished Novello (formerly the Strand) should re-open with Shakespeare's most musical comedy; and, even if the composer who gives the theatre its new name might have been taken aback by John Woolf's jazzy score and Sianed Jones's bluesy ululations, Michael Boyd's production has improved immeasurably since its under-cooked Stratford opening.
Its most original feature is Forbes Masson's Feste: a Scots clown in tartan who pines hopelessly for Meg Fraser's two-timing Maria. Masson's Pagliacci-like disenchantment not only motivates his melancholy songs but also solves one of the great Shakespearean riddles: why Feste suddenly disappears from the box-tree gulling of Malvolio to be replaced by the anonymous Fabian. An actor-friend assures me it was because the original Malvolio almost certainly refused to be upstaged by Robert Armin's Feste; here it is because Masson, deeply wounded by Maria's complicity with Sir Toby, goes off in a sad sulk.
This is in keeping with a production that puts psychological truth before scenic realism. But, while Boyd's anti-naturalistic approach destroys visual cliche, it also undermines the play's class element. You can hardly believe that Aislin McGuckin's whip-brandishing Olivia would refuse to marry Barnaby Kay's narcissistic Orsino partly because of his superior status. And even Richard Cordery's Malvolio, though much funnier than before in his canary-coloured biker's kit, lacks the insecurity of the born arriviste.
Where the production succeeds is in capturing the dizzying madness of Shakespeare's Illyria. Sally Tatum, replacing the original Viola, sports an Elvis quiff and a bottle-green jacket and seems properly bemused by the surrounding identity confusion. Clive Wood's cruelly exploitative Sir Toby and John Mackay's lank, flaxen-haired Sir Andrew also bring to mind the sado-masochistic relationship of Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot. This may not be the definitive Twelfth Night, but any production that evokes Beckett, Leoncavallo and even Lewis Carroll has a lot going for it.
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