Like desire and love themselves, Cheek by Jowl's all-male production both shows and hides. It is full of displays, deceptions and disguises, and sometimes dangers, too. It unpicks the lock to the drama's secret, mysterious heart. At the very start, we see Andrey Kuzichev - who plays Viola - being singled out by the rest of the belted and braced ensemble. A simple skirt is wound gravely around his reluctant waist. In the blink of an eye, the man becomes a woman and the actor a character.
Declan Donnellan's production plays on the audience's knowledge that this is a man playing a woman playing a man. It is like a delicious game, and one full of erotic tension, heightened by laughter whenever Kuzichev's Viola - disguised as a boy - forgets the rules. At one point, she lays her head on Orsino's shoulder, much to his discomfort; at another, she leaps for safety into the Captain's arms. At the end, Vladimir Vdovichenkov's Orsino seems understandably disconcerted about exactly who he is marrying. No Shakespeare play entwines merriment and melancholy quite as slyly as Twelfth Night, and Donnellan taps into the Russian temperament to sharpen the tang of sweet and sour.
Feste is like a cheesy night-club crooner; the carousing of Sir Toby and his friends turns to violence, which Toby takes out on a lovestruck Maria, who turns for solace to vodka and cigarettes; Malvolio's fantasies of love turn into a straitjacketed cruelty. Madness stalks the shadows: the madness of love, grief, longing and - in a final twist of the knife - revenge. Even if you know the play, you are never sure if things will turn out well. With black and white turning to creamy Chekhovian hues, Nick Ormerod's simplest of designs sets the tone for an exquisitely acted production whose confident directness speaks straight to a British audience - even though every word spoken is in Russian.
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 0845 120 7554.
