Luxurient as a three-bird roast and just as overstuffed, the RSC’s transferring production of Twelfth Night is Shakespeare so rich it could give you indigestion.
There is a lot going on in Twelfth Night at the best of times. The headline event is the adventures of young Viola, who shipwrecks in the coastal country of Illyria and attempts to go incognito, disguising herself as a man (Cesario), who inadvertently leaves a trail of broken hearts across the kingdom.
If it was written today, that would probably be the whole plot, but Shakespeare was just getting started. You’ve also got the wealthy countess Olivia, who is in mourning for her dad and brother, but for whatever reason lives with a menagerie of bickering weirdos. There’s Orsina, ruler of the island, who has the hots for Olivia and, increasingly, Cesario. You’ve got Olivia’s uptight steward Malvolio, who the weirdos trick into believing Olivia is into him. There is a jester, Feste, who sort of does his own thing. And Olivia has a twin brother named Sebastian, who wanders around Ilyria having his own adventures, both siblings assuming the other to have drowned.
Prasanna Puwanarajah’s production has received its fair share of rapturous reviews, but for me it was too much. There are added songs (by Gen Z chamber pop songwriter Matt Maltese) and dance sequences, some idiosyncratic character choices (notably Joplin Sibtain’s angry alcoholic Sir Toby Belch), a very high concept set from James Cotterill (the whole thing is a massive pipe organ, basically) and moreover there’s Michael Grady-Hall’s vaudevillian Feste, whose stage time is greatly expanded by lengthy variety routines that are clever and witty and audience inclusive but not exactly seamlessly integrated into the already very busy Shakespeare play.
I guess if you’re looking for an overarching meaning it’s that everything is performance: Viola performs the role of Cesario, Olivia performs the role of mourner, Malvolio performs the role of suitor, Feste just flat out performs, and the whole thing is wrapped up in a giant organ recital. Which is all very well but doesn’t necessarily add up to a coherent enough message to make this three-hour-long comedy zip along so much as trundle decadently.
To be clear, lots of things about it are great: I particularly like Daniel Monks’s soft, uncertain Orsino, Samuel West’s jobsworth Malvolio, and Grady-Hall is tremendously entertaining as Feste. But in total it’s too much, like eating a whole box of chocolates when what you actually needed was a proper meal.
