Top-notch productions of Shakespeare’s greatest comedy have been a bit thin on the ground lately. However, Jonathan Munby’s version, for English Touring Theatre and Sheffield Theatres, is up there with the best. There is something strangely spectral about a production that, with its faces at the window and its revolving wardrobe, reminded me of the enchanted worlds of JM Barrie and CS Lewis.
Brian Protheroe’s Feste, a laconic Irish balladeer, sets the tone by framing the action, set in a crumbling, white-walled mansion, with his gently melancholic songs. The derelict setting is spooky, but the play’s passions are pushed to the limits. Rebecca Johnson’s randy Olivia can hardly keep her hands off Rose Reynold’s disguised, boy-soldier Viola, who flings Orsino’s boots at him in a fit of emotional frustration. Even at the climax, it is clear that the two women are destined to be bosom friends. Similarly, Michael Benz’s Sebastian, even when hitched to Olivia, casts a loving look at the prison-bound Antonio.
If the sexual passion, symbolised by sudden showers of rose petals, is intense, the comic scenes have an uneasy edge. Hugh Ross’s wonderfully prim, starched Malvolio may deserve his comeuppance, but there is something manic about his declaration of love for Olivia. And you sense a touch of vengeful, class-driven sadism about his entrapment by David Fielder’s permanently pickled Sir Toby and Doña Croll’s bustlingly energetic Maria. When the latter says of Malvolio “I have dogged him like his murderer,” you begin to wonder at her motives.
I have seen funnier Twelfth Nights but Munby’s haunting production, aided by Colin Richmond’s design and Grant Olding’s music, creates a complete world – one in which a set of spirits seem to be re-enacting the transient absurdity of the human pageant.
• Until 22 November. Box office: 0844-871 7651. Venue: Richmond theatre, Surrey. Then touring until 29 November. At Theatre Royal Brighton (0844 871 7615), 25-29 November.
• Best Shakespeare productions: your favourite Twelfth Night
