EWAN CAMERON picks out two fascinating music shows, fusing the Korean, and the Celtic, with the modern
Winter gloom
SIMON PARSONS questions whether a dark take on Shakespeare’s Seasonal comedy is in harmony with the original text
(L to R) Cat McKeever as Olivia's Attendant, Daniel Millar as Fabien, Michael Grady-Hall as Feste and Charlotte O’Leary as Olivia’s Woman
[Helen Murray]
BENJAMIN POTHIER suggests that Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain point to the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic flora
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
Twelfth Night
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon
A BLEAK, funereal setting constantly being touched up with black paint and later dominated by an oversized organ is James Cotterill’s unsettling design for a play that usually champions life and passion.
Director Prasanna Puwanarajah’s dark take on Shakespeare’s bittersweet comedy leans heavily on the bitter, especially where the original text is concerned, and much of the humour is an addition in the form of Feste’s extended clowning routines and modern asides.
It is no surprise that Freema Agyeman’s feisty and emotionally capricious Olivia has rejected Bally Gill’s self-absorbed Orsino and his protestations of love for the youthfully malleable charms of the cross-dressing Viola, Gwyneth Keyworth. In notable contrast to their showy, love-sick affectations is the selfless sincerity of the doomed passion expressed by ill-fated Antonio for the man he dragged from the sea, Sebastian.
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Family issues and dragon-fuelled history amount to a vacuous spectacle that ill-fits the theatre, muses SIMON PARSONS
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
GORDON PARSONS salutes the apt return of Brecht’s vaudevillian cartoon drama that retains the vitality of the boxing or the circus ring
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship