Twelfth Night
Reviews
BBC SOUTHERN COUNTIES RADIO (taken from a live broadcast)
Last night I went to the Guildford Castle Grounds for the first night of Twelfth Night and I can tell you it opened with panache and absolute confidence, so I just relaxed right into it.
Twelfth Night is an old comedy written round about 1601/1602 but this young company brings a freshness to both the jokes and the insults that marks out the particular text, and it opens with a targeted joke: as the two players who appear we are told “these are identical twins”, well of course they are not identical but we've just really got to believe this!!
Twelfth Night hinges on a shipwreck, mistaken identity, disguise and it's a cross dressing, cross-gender fest.
The interpretation of this particular production is very clever, it's got a modern twist in that Feste is now played by a woman, Trudi Jackson, wonderfully. But I think the evening probably belongs to Matt Pinches, as the very resistible Malvolio; he is oily, he is unsavoury, but he is very amusing. We have to watch out the cross gartering exercise. I have never seen anything quite like it, because it was so clever - one of those moments in life when you think “O yes, it's so right”, and he just literally strips off. It's funny, it's amusing and I suddenly thought – “That is such an original idea”.
It's a very physical production. It regularly spangles new ideas with the barrels, the chests, and a penny whistle fan fare, but I think the pacing of the production is what I particularly enjoyed. It's a comedy and almost farcical in it's early concept. It moves along rapidly, you don't get bored.
I took, deliberately, a seat at the back and I saw everything, I heard everything. The whole thing is very physical and moves around the audience, moves right across the spectrum of the acting area - it is just a space.
They are a young company full of ideas. They have an excellent director, and the production of Twelfth Night was full of original ideas and I suspect, and hope, that A Midsummer Night's Dream will be the same.
I loved the production…
Review by Jeff Thomson
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SURREY ADVERTISER
Shakespeare Classic gets a lighter touch
Guildford Shakespeare Company's production of Twelfth Night in the Castle Grounds is a sunny confection at odds with the current weather.
Playing down the skull beneath the skins element in the text, it concentrates on the cakes and ale and the fun and games, and if it loses something because of this it also gains.
Olivia and Orsino have always been rather boring characters, but not in this instance. Roanna Cochrane's Olivia isn't a depressed, miserable recluse. She's a thoroughly likable young upper crust woman and Jason Eddy's Orsino was no longer miserable and languishing, but imperious and domineering.
Unfortunately this lightening up was extended to the wonderful Feste, which was played with panache and verve by Trudi Jackson. This hyperactive drunken clown with the frenzied hair and demented limbs wasn't the wonderfully melancholy Fool of Shakespeare who peppered his wit with pessimism and slated his songs with sadness.
There's a delightful Viola, a roistering Sir Toby and a long lanky Andrew Aguecheek who warmed the cockles of your heart with his nice but dim vulnerability.
Matt Pinches gives us a Malvolio from Birmingham, an accent whose whine was made for the part. Pompous, humourless, holier than thou, very funny, and, at the end, achingly dignified.
The Castle Grounds are used with imagination to draw us all into the action. “The rain” sings Feste as she closes the show, “it raineth every day”. The audience laughed somewhat ruefully, but none of them had left to dry out and warm up.
It was all far too enjoyable and it's at the Castle Grounds until tomorrow (Saturday) after which this talented company goes to the Univeristy of Surrey's lakeside where they'll be presenting A Midsummer Night's Dream from July 12 to 21.
Reviewed by Margaret Burgess
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FARNHAM HERALD
Comedy of errors saved by it's comic qualities
It is easy to get lost among the meanderings of Twelfth Night's ludicrous plot of cross-dressing, mistaken identities and convoluted love triangles.
All credit then goes to the Guildford Shakespeare Company, whose new open-air production not only avoids this trap, but succeeds in bringing the play alive with its vivid and thoroughly enjoyable characterisations.
Almost all members of the cast show a superb command of the nuances of Shakespeare's text. There is no mere reciting of lines here, but rather each actor speaks out of a complete understanding of his or her own character and couple that with an excellent sense of pace. In addition, you cannot help but feel the relish with which the actors tackle the degree of caricature required for each role.
However, if most cast members succeed in these respects, particular note should be given to Julie Rose Smith's defiant yet vulnerable Viola as well as to Trudi Jackson's blend of drunken bawdiness and sharp wit in a rather original cross-gender interpretation of Feste.
Indeed, the strength of the production lies heavily in the quality of the acting. As a complete production, however there are aspects, which are not well executed.
The first, and perhaps most serious problem, arises from the number of blatantly contemporary gestures, pieces of music and, most importantly, textual emphases. These features, though not inherently wrong on their own, seem to sit rather anachronistically in the context of the play's text, even to the point of disrupting it's sense.
The second difficulty lies in the rather half-hearted attempt to integrate music into the play. Although the scripted songs delivered by the characters themselves are lively and humorous, there is nothing to knit them together stylistically. The same, if not worse, can be said of e background music, which is patchy to say the least.
However, these difficulties seem to be symptomatic of a rather more serious problem of context and setting in the production at large. The production seems neither to choose an imaginary nor a real setting and time. At best, it seems to be endowed with a vague Indian or colonial feel; at worst, it is a complete jumble of textual, visual and musical references to various times and places which grate against each other and refuse to let the play settle.
All in all, however, this is a production of a comedy of errors saved by the quality of its comedy. Though the play comes apart in its serious moments, it is for its comic scenes, particularly those between Sir Toby Belch and his gang, that the play will be remembered. Performed with clear emphasis and a faultless sense of timing, these scenes are a triumph of well-devised staging and spot-on comic movement.
Audience members may well leave Guildford Castle Grounds this week a little battered by the unseasonable wind and rain, but they most certainly will be lifted in spirits by this delightful romp through love's most humorous twists and turns.
Reviewed by Katherine Rollo
Reviews
BBC SOUTHERN COUNTIES RADIO (taken from a live broadcast)
Last night I went to the Guildford Castle Grounds for the first night of Twelfth Night and I can tell you it opened with panache and absolute confidence, so I just relaxed right into it.
Twelfth Night is an old comedy written round about 1601/1602 but this young company brings a freshness to both the jokes and the insults that marks out the particular text, and it opens with a targeted joke: as the two players who appear we are told “these are identical twins”, well of course they are not identical but we've just really got to believe this!!
Twelfth Night hinges on a shipwreck, mistaken identity, disguise and it's a cross dressing, cross-gender fest.
The interpretation of this particular production is very clever, it's got a modern twist in that Feste is now played by a woman, Trudi Jackson, wonderfully. But I think the evening probably belongs to Matt Pinches, as the very resistible Malvolio; he is oily, he is unsavoury, but he is very amusing. We have to watch out the cross gartering exercise. I have never seen anything quite like it, because it was so clever - one of those moments in life when you think “O yes, it's so right”, and he just literally strips off. It's funny, it's amusing and I suddenly thought – “That is such an original idea”.
It's a very physical production. It regularly spangles new ideas with the barrels, the chests, and a penny whistle fan fare, but I think the pacing of the production is what I particularly enjoyed. It's a comedy and almost farcical in it's early concept. It moves along rapidly, you don't get bored.
I took, deliberately, a seat at the back and I saw everything, I heard everything. The whole thing is very physical and moves around the audience, moves right across the spectrum of the acting area - it is just a space.
They are a young company full of ideas. They have an excellent director, and the production of Twelfth Night was full of original ideas and I suspect, and hope, that A Midsummer Night's Dream will be the same.
I loved the production…
Review by Jeff Thomson
Back to Top
SURREY ADVERTISER
Shakespeare Classic gets a lighter touch
Guildford Shakespeare Company's production of Twelfth Night in the Castle Grounds is a sunny confection at odds with the current weather.
Playing down the skull beneath the skins element in the text, it concentrates on the cakes and ale and the fun and games, and if it loses something because of this it also gains.
Olivia and Orsino have always been rather boring characters, but not in this instance. Roanna Cochrane's Olivia isn't a depressed, miserable recluse. She's a thoroughly likable young upper crust woman and Jason Eddy's Orsino was no longer miserable and languishing, but imperious and domineering.
Unfortunately this lightening up was extended to the wonderful Feste, which was played with panache and verve by Trudi Jackson. This hyperactive drunken clown with the frenzied hair and demented limbs wasn't the wonderfully melancholy Fool of Shakespeare who peppered his wit with pessimism and slated his songs with sadness.
There's a delightful Viola, a roistering Sir Toby and a long lanky Andrew Aguecheek who warmed the cockles of your heart with his nice but dim vulnerability.
Matt Pinches gives us a Malvolio from Birmingham, an accent whose whine was made for the part. Pompous, humourless, holier than thou, very funny, and, at the end, achingly dignified.
The Castle Grounds are used with imagination to draw us all into the action. “The rain” sings Feste as she closes the show, “it raineth every day”. The audience laughed somewhat ruefully, but none of them had left to dry out and warm up.
It was all far too enjoyable and it's at the Castle Grounds until tomorrow (Saturday) after which this talented company goes to the Univeristy of Surrey's lakeside where they'll be presenting A Midsummer Night's Dream from July 12 to 21.
Reviewed by Margaret Burgess
Back to Top
FARNHAM HERALD
Comedy of errors saved by it's comic qualities
It is easy to get lost among the meanderings of Twelfth Night's ludicrous plot of cross-dressing, mistaken identities and convoluted love triangles.
All credit then goes to the Guildford Shakespeare Company, whose new open-air production not only avoids this trap, but succeeds in bringing the play alive with its vivid and thoroughly enjoyable characterisations.
Almost all members of the cast show a superb command of the nuances of Shakespeare's text. There is no mere reciting of lines here, but rather each actor speaks out of a complete understanding of his or her own character and couple that with an excellent sense of pace. In addition, you cannot help but feel the relish with which the actors tackle the degree of caricature required for each role.
However, if most cast members succeed in these respects, particular note should be given to Julie Rose Smith's defiant yet vulnerable Viola as well as to Trudi Jackson's blend of drunken bawdiness and sharp wit in a rather original cross-gender interpretation of Feste.
Indeed, the strength of the production lies heavily in the quality of the acting. As a complete production, however there are aspects, which are not well executed.
The first, and perhaps most serious problem, arises from the number of blatantly contemporary gestures, pieces of music and, most importantly, textual emphases. These features, though not inherently wrong on their own, seem to sit rather anachronistically in the context of the play's text, even to the point of disrupting it's sense.
The second difficulty lies in the rather half-hearted attempt to integrate music into the play. Although the scripted songs delivered by the characters themselves are lively and humorous, there is nothing to knit them together stylistically. The same, if not worse, can be said of e background music, which is patchy to say the least.
However, these difficulties seem to be symptomatic of a rather more serious problem of context and setting in the production at large. The production seems neither to choose an imaginary nor a real setting and time. At best, it seems to be endowed with a vague Indian or colonial feel; at worst, it is a complete jumble of textual, visual and musical references to various times and places which grate against each other and refuse to let the play settle.
All in all, however, this is a production of a comedy of errors saved by the quality of its comedy. Though the play comes apart in its serious moments, it is for its comic scenes, particularly those between Sir Toby Belch and his gang, that the play will be remembered. Performed with clear emphasis and a faultless sense of timing, these scenes are a triumph of well-devised staging and spot-on comic movement.
Audience members may well leave Guildford Castle Grounds this week a little battered by the unseasonable wind and rain, but they most certainly will be lifted in spirits by this delightful romp through love's most humorous twists and turns.
Reviewed by Katherine Rollo