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TWELFTH NIGHT

★★★★

Barbican

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TWELFTH NIGHT

Barbican

★★★★

“There are many moments of light and silliness in this production”

When Feste – the fool attached to Olivia’s household – hangs upside down from the rafters, crooning as though in an after-hours jazz club; while Orsino is draped across a grand piano ten feet below him, you know you’re in for a “Twelfth Night” with a difference. Feste is less the sword of Damocles, but more Cupid’s arrow, if only he wouldn’t spend so much time clowning around. Played by Michael Grady-Hall, he weaves himself in and out of each of the play’s storylines as though he’s at the circus. Even during the interval, he plays Catch with the audience.

Yet he stops short of making this the ‘Feste Show’. Directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, this eccentrically stylised production reveals how strong an ensemble piece it is. While Feste feels the need to fix everyone’s problems, they all seem to be getting on with it fine anyway. And relishing the opportunity. The sense of mourning and melancholy that introduces the story is reliant on the music more than the characters. Whether it is composer Matt Maltese’s jazzy piano accompaniments or the imposing pipe organ that periodically dominates James Cotterill’s outlandish sets, the tunes and refrains are what trigger the emotions. Ragtime accompanies the boisterous, boozy, behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Sir Toby and company. The same melody, slowed down for the organ, reflects the themes of lost and confused love that the protagonists are grappling with.

Daniel Monks’ Orsino is a velvet-clad playboy. A bachelor who prefers others to do his lustful bidding for him. Continually rejected by Olivia, his heart’s desire, he conveys a parallel growing affection for Cesario, his newly acquired manservant (the shipwrecked Viola in disguise). The same homoeroticism is more than hinted at between Olivia and Cesario/Viola. Gwyneth Keyworth embraces Olivia’s contradictions: resilient and practical yet vulnerable and easily infatuated. Continually dropping hints that he/she isn’t who she really is, Olivia pursues him/her anyway, perhaps not really caring too much about the gender. Freema Agyeman is a striking and versatile Olivia. Forcefully charismatic and sultry, and also playfully swinging between offended gravitas and excited sensuality.

Samuel West shines as Malvolio, austere one moment until duped into shaking his tail feathers for Olivia. Hilarious in his stockings, garters and broad smile. Yet when the game is up, his final exit is ultimately moving. Joplin Sibtain’s Sir Toby Belch is like an untrained hound while Danielle Henry’s Maria is his handler. As Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Demetri Goritsas is an all-shook-up, Americanised mix of Stan Laurel and Hugh Laurie.

Puwanarajah’s playful approach often detracts from the true emotion, but our attention never wanders and, among the mix of styles, small details are mischievously slipped in – like “Chekhov’s tramp”. A wandering vagrant or police officer may cross the stage for no apparent reason. A painter and decorator will be seen working away on nobody-knows-what. There are many moments of light and silliness in this production. It is a play that sets out amid grief, mourning and tragedy on its stylish journey towards celebration and unity, with some unexpected steps on the way. Occasional ad-libbing, along with scripted anachronisms, reference the festive season. We leave the theatre with a warm spring in our step. A joyous and heart-tugging production.



TWELFTH NIGHT

Barbican

Reviewed on 16th December 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Helen Murray


 

 

 

 

TWELFTH NIGHT

TWELFTH NIGHT

TWELFTH NIGHT

Review of Under Milk Wood – 4 Stars

Milk

Under Milk Wood

The Watermill Theatre

Reviewed – 26th October 2017

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

“The Watermill provides a perfect backdrop to Thomas’s bucolic celebration”

 

‘To begin, at the beginning’. Dylan Thomas wrote his ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood, for the radio. After a US premiere as a stage play, its first UK performance was on the BBC in 1954 with a starry cast that included Richard Burton, Sybil Thorndike and Emlyn Williams.

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The piece is more like an extended poem than a play and it unfolds as a series of funny and touching vignettes all on one Spring day in an entirely fictional Welsh seaside town called Llareggub (‘bugger all’ backwards).

Dylan Thomas was a poet, intoxicated with the power of words. Who can forget a phrase like ‘the sloeback, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat bobbing sea’? His writing is rich with wonderfully descriptive language that paints a vivid picture of the interlinked lives of his many characters.
After its radio debut, this joyful celebration of a kind of picturesque Welshness soon won a loyal following. A stage version in which the cast sat on stools for most of the performance was a big success, and in 1972 Burton reprised his role as narrator in a film. An animated version and several TV productions all followed.

The delightful Watermill Theatre at Newbury is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Its rustic setting provides a perfect backdrop to Thomas’s bucolic celebration. Director Brendan O’Hea’s staging, with design by Anna Kelsey is fittingly simple for a voice-driven play, with some atmospheric lighting (Wayne Dowdeswell), much (but not too much) mist and hardly any props. The talented cast of six give passionate and physical performances, sharing over 30 male and female roles. Some sympathetic new music (Olly Fox) has been added and they make good use of the auditorium as well as the stage.

First on is Welsh-born Lynn Hunter as old Captain Cat. She gives a wonderfully warm performance in this role and later also as Mrs Organ Morgan. As the Voice, Alistair McGowan (‘The Big Impression’, ‘Have I Got News for You’) rightly does not attempt to imitate the lyrical intensity of Richard Burton’s performances. His accent is light. He moves around the action, providing an adept commentary to it.

Charlotte O’Leary gives a particularly memorable performance as ever-nagging house-perfect Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard who calls her two long-suffering ex-husbands back from the grave to recite their daily tasks, in order. Steffan Cennydd won the Richard Burton Award before graduating this year. His acting is passionate and compelling. Without leaving the stage, he switches easily between male and female roles, with some wonderful comic moments as Mae Rose Cottage (‘Call me Dolores, like they do in stories’).

Polly Garter is one of the play’s most memorable characters, forever mourning her lost lover, little Willy Wee. Caroline Sheen sang and acted to great effect both as Polly and as Lord Cut-Glass who ‘scampers from clock to clock, a bunch of clock-keys in one hand, a fish-head in the other’. Ross Ford is 6’5” tall, an unusual height for an actor. He is well-cast as the sinister poisoner Mr Pugh, as Nogood Boyo, who never catches anything but a whalebone corset, and the boozy Cherry Owen.

The play closes as ‘dusk is drowned’ and ‘the windy town is a hill of windows’. A delightful and memorable evening in a perfect setting.

 

Reviewed by David Woodward

Photography by Philip Tull

 

 

UNDER MILK WOOD

is at The Watermill Theatre until 4th November

 

 

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