My day was made when, on my way to catch a matinee of the RSC’s Twelfth Night at the Duke of York’s, a call came through announcing that the long wait was over.

Summer will be joyful again when Hot Ice returns for an eight week season at the Blackpool Pleasure Beach on 14 July.

I have long been an aficionado of the Blackpool ice dance show, the best in Europe, and it was touching to think of Amanda Thompson, Pleasure Beach supremo, making sure that I was the first to hear the news.

My mood lightened, my step quickened and I even felt positive about seeing Richard Wilson as Malvolio.

In the event, he’s a perfectly good Malvolio, of course, but there’s absolutely no comic energy in the letter scene, or in the smiling and cross-gartering.

The RSC used to have great actors like Emrys James and Nicol Williamson playing this role.  

Otherwise, Greg Doran’s production is intensely enjoyable, almost as good as Michael Grandage’s in the West End last year, beautifully designed by Robert Jones as a Levantine fastness with a shell-like splash of surf and a great lighting gag in the Cesario/Feste scene that begins the second half.

There’s great Sapphic sexual chemistry, too, between Nancy Carroll and Alexandra Gilbreath as Viola and Olivia, revisiting a relationship they started as cousins Celia and Rosalind in the late Steven Pimlott’s RSC As You Like It.     

Funnily enough, before lunch, I’d bumped into Shakespeare in Love director John Madden in the BAFTA Piccadilly headquarters, no doubt discussing his forthcoming My Fair Lady film for Cameron Mackintosh; he was a radiantly bemused Sebastian in a student Twelfth Night many moons ago. The RSC’s Sam Alexander is an agreeable young Seb, but he’s too dull.

It’s tough, Sebastian. He’s not half as intelligent as his twin sister, he rarely competes in the looks department, either, and he’s swept off his feet by a silly widow who’s mistaken him for a sexy androgyne. I reckon he’s doomed.

Another hard bit in Twelfth Night is the replacement of Feste with Fabian at the gulling scene, but here Doran manages the rare trick of making it seem utterly plausible.

Miltos Yerolemou’s fuzzy-haired Greek Feste’s had enough for now after the midnight revels and goes back to the streets, where he’ll ply his trade for a while before donning the Topaz robes at the prison.

And Tony Jayawardena’s fat, jolly Fabian in a fez is just the sort of bloke who’d be hanging around the gardens in the afternoon, game for a laugh and up for a caper.

There’s plenty more to enjoy, too: that sudden “did I see him, did I not?” flash of Malvolio sighting Sebastian right at the start of the play; the guitar and mandolin music of Paul Englishby; the benign oafishness of Richard McCabe’s Sir Toby, the comic idiocy of James Fleet’s Aguecheek.

The theatre was packed with schoolkids including a busload of boys who’d come all the way from Exeter. One of them said the show was nearly as good as the best thing he’d ever seen. Oh, and what was that? We Will Rock You. Moving right along…. 
 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 10:42 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.