★★★★

“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.

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR at the Marylebone Theatre

★★★★

“for a comedy of misunderstandings, it is easy to understand why the play has become a classic”

The Russian-American novelist, Vladímir Nabokov, said of Gogol’s “The Government Inspector”: “It begins with a blinding flash of lightning and ends in a thunderclap… and is wholly placed in the tense gap between the flash and the crash”. Patrick Myles’ adaptation stays perfectly true to Nabokov’s description, literally reading it as a stage direction. Except Myles has downplayed (for the better) any sense of tension, filling the gap instead with its flashes and crashes of humour. There are subtle updates in the language that bring the play closer to our own time, but the original satirising of greed, stupidity, political corruption and hypocrisy needs little tweaking to sound as relevant today as it did nearly two hundred years ago.

In a Northern English provincial town, Governor Swashprattle (Dan Skinner) wakes from a nightmare only to be plunged into more misery as the town’s corrupt officials assemble to spread the news that an incognito inspector will soon be arriving to investigate them all. In the flurry of activity to cover up their misconduct and misdemeanours, further panic erupts from the suspicion that he has already arrived. They blindly assume that the over-privileged Londoner staying at the local inn is he. Percy Fopdoodle (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) quickly cottons on to their mistake and, being the unscrupulous hustler that he is, milks it for all he can, accepting all their bribes and soaking up their wine and women.

The comedy is frequently slapstick, and always farcical. But perhaps too pronounced, exaggerated even, as the characters compete for laughs. There is a definite ‘Blackadder’ feel, with Pythonesque touches. And it is difficult not to bring to mind ‘Fawlty Towers’ – particularly, of course, ‘The Hotel Inspectors’ episode. Yet there is also a restoration feel, and the characters all have names that are a mix of P. G. Wodehouse and pantomime. It is a mash-up that is reflected in Melanie Jane Brooke’s set and costume. The Governor is a Napoleon lookalike, while his daughter (a hilarious Chaya Gupta) dresses like an overpampered poodle. Cultural references surf the centuries too, yet bizarrely it somehow works, like a Chuck Berry guitar solo layered over Beethoven’s ‘da-da-da-dum’.

The performances are suitably heightened. Skinner’s Governor Swashprattle is a distinctly unlikeable chap, but we warm to him in a boo-hiss kind of way. Smith-Bynoe’s smooth-talking grifter holds the show with a commanding performance. We (almost) sympathise with the irresistible urge of this con-man to out-con the con-artists. The narrative is fantastically preposterous, until the fourth wall is broken and there is a sinister realisation that the farce is quite close to the bone. The famous last lines that the Governor throws to the audience “What are you laughing about? You are laughing about yourselves!” are famous, yet overshadowed in topicality by others in Myles’ revised text; at one moment poignantly stealing from, and paraphrasing, Stalin: ‘It’s not who votes that counts – it’s who counts the votes’.

Social commentary or fantasy? “The Government Inspector” is both. Its targets are obvious and the depiction of them clear cut but caricature. Opening and closing with a bang, it is loud and funny in between. Some subtlety wouldn’t have gone amiss, but for a comedy of misunderstandings, it is easy to understand why the play has become a classic.

Tag Archives: Daniel Millar

TWELFTH NIGHT

★★★★

Barbican

TWELFTH NIGHT

Barbican

★★★★

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

TWELFTH NIGHT

Barbican

Reviewed on 16th December 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Helen Murray

TWELFTH NIGHT

TWELFTH NIGHT

TWELFTH NIGHT

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

★★★★

Marylebone Theatre

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR at the Marylebone Theatre

★★★★

“for a comedy of misunderstandings, it is easy to understand why the play has become a classic”