Twelfth Night at the National Theatre
First off let me say how amazing it is to see these productions from our home at such a time as this. It’s a gift to all of us. That being said, it shouldn’t shut down our ability to voice our opinion on the work, and stretch our ability to look at the work with a critical eye.
The latest in the broadcast series is Twelfth Night directed by Simon Godwin featuring Tasmin Greig as Malvolia. Godwin’s is a mixed gendered cast that works very well. There are no difficulties in believing the characters in that regard. The design, set in a late 70’s motif, is impeccabile. In almost all of Shakespeare’s work we have a delineation of status, e.g. royals versus servants or mechanicals. So we usually get two forms of humor, one more sophisticated and one more broad. In some works the grand behave as badly as the servants through some device or other. Godwin clearly has pitched the work very broadly, almost everything is a joke. Here lies the problem, in doing so, we lose any real tension or stakes in the work. Olivia, in act one, has practically no status. Certain conventions to show this with some form of retinue, or how others defer to her, is lost. Her behavior towards Cesario/Viola becomes slapstick almost from the start. However, she gains her status back in act two.
The biggest problem I have is the sexual/romantic tension in the work, especially as it crosses gender lines. No one bats an eye when Malvolia is smitten with Olivia. I’m fine with that. On the other hand, Orsino and Cesario/Viola are constantly played for laughs. One of the biggest tensions in the work is between Cesario and Orsino. Orsino is clearly falling in love with what appears to him is a boy, a device Shakespeare often uses. Yes there is humor in it for us who are in on the secret but there is also a true longing and something more there: a pathos, and the tension of what is perceived as a transgression, something possibly forbidden.
The one whose intentions are the clearest in this production is Antonio, the sea captain, who is clearly and unabashedly in love with Sebastian. When he follows Sebastian to Illyria and tells him to meet him at the Elephant, an inn ( a location we never see in the text) it is a gay bar complete with a drag act wich is bewilldering. It makes no sense and is incongruous with the sexuality in the rest of the play. Sebastian’s intentions towards Antonio are never really clear in this production.
Godwin, the director, has cut the relationship between Maria and Sir Toby in an interesting way. All the early references to Maria being in love with Toby have been cut so in the end when she agrees to marry him it’s out of the blue. Specifically her scene with Feste the fool where the fool calls her out on her feelings. We have seen no special affection on Maria’s part throughout the work. Both performances are exceptional but again we lack longing here on Maria’s part and thus we have missed an opportunity to pull us closer to this character and her choices.
Malvolia, played remarkably and flawlessly by Tasmin Greig, gave us what we were missing from the rest of the work: humor and pathos. Clearly the director was seduced by the character, and the actor. Malvolia is a key to the story but not the central plot line. This production was the Malvolia show including her mounting the stairs into the rain as the last image we see which, although beautiful, made no real sense to the rest of the work.
As the play concludes and Viola and Sebastian are reunited, we see Olivia is not as smitten with Sebastian or her part of the bargain, the fervor in which she pursued Cesario/Viola seems to have evaporated. Directorially it is a strong choice. Orsino on his last line passionately kisses Sebastian. We assume it is because he thinks it is Viola, again a strong choice, and if we hadn’t played everything for a laugh this would have given us all a little pause.
Overall I enjoyed the production, and if you haven’t seen it I recommend you take it in. I didn’t agree with many of the director’s choices; they seemed at odds with themselves and the script at times but for the most part a beautiful work.
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