ajhlovestheatre

TWELFTH NIGHT or What You Will

by William Shakespeare

directed by Owen Horsley

Regents Park Open Air Theatre, London – until 8 June 2024

https://openairtheatre.com/production/twelfth-night-or-what-you-will

I’ve seen funnier and more moving Twelfth Nights than Owen Horsley’s new Regents Park production but I’ve never seen one that so persuasively cuts to the queer heart and flamboyant strangeness of this melancholy comedy, and which creates such a complete alternative universe for this play and these characters to exist in. The island of Illyria is now a gay nightspot called Olivia’s, the time frame is indeterminate but the costumes have nods to 1940s elegance as well as present day chic, and the overall aesthetic of Basia Bińkowska’s set, Ryan Dawson Laight’s costumes and Carole Hancock’s wigs, hair and make-up seems to have been inspired by those glossily gorgeous but vaguely unsettling Jean-Paul Gaultier fragrance ads, the ones with the hunky sailors and the corseted beauties.

Anna Francolini’s nightclub proprietress Olivia who, with her cloud of auburn hair and high definition maquillage, bears an uncanny resemblance to Patti LuPone’s Norma Desmond in the original staging of Sunset Boulevard, carrying her dead brothers ashes around in an urn like it’s a Tony award, is den mother to a dysfunctional queer family. Dawson Laight dresses her like an old school movie star, in jet black lace with sun glasses, veil and trail for mourning, and like a couturier’s vision of a shepherdess for her wedding. She’s poised, brittle, camp and utterly magnetic.

In Olivia’s domain, Toby Belch (a barnstorming but multi-layered Michael Matus, looking like he’s wandered in from last year’s triumphant La Cage aux Folles, which shared the same costume designer, on this very stage) is a mischief-making drag queen with an unexpectedly aggressive edge. His sidekick Andrew Aguecheek (Matthew Spencer, raising gormless indignation to an art form) comes across like a businessman with emotional problems, and Maria (Anita Reynolds, delightful) is a fierce, Welsh accented good time girl. The love between the sexy pairing of Andro Cowperthwaite’s Sebastian and Nicholas Karimi’s Antonio absolutely does dare to speak its name, in fact it’s bellowed joyously from the rooftops. In sailor drag, Cowperthwaite and Evelyn Miller, beautifully voiced as his twin Viola, look like supermodels.

It may all sound a bit gimmicky but in practise it’s mostly successful, and feels entirely in the spirit of Shakespeare’s text. The all-pervading sense of camp sometimes compromises the emotional weight of the play: Francolini’s Olivia has tremendous authority and charisma but her grief and love never seem particularly deeply felt. Neither do the torments of Raphael Bushay’s charming Orsino.

Similarly, Malvolio’s exiting statement “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you” feels less like a howl of humiliated fury than a discontented flouncing off, an impression borne out by a rather sweet coda which sees the dysfunctional family reunited despite everything that’s happened. Tamsin Greig delivered the line like a punch to the gut in the last National Theatre production, but here Richard Cant, otherwise a very effective, vinegary Malvolio, seems less horribly aggrieved.

The estimable Julie Legrand, crop-haired and elegant in a shimmering full length coat, is a formidable, androgynous presence, and sings with the louche assurance of a cabaret veteran, but it’s never quite clear who this Feste is and how they fit into this slightly seedy milieu. That said, the mutual affection with Olivia is palpable and when they join singing forces at the end, it’s joyful. Sam Kenyon’s bluesy, jazzy score is so effective there are moments where one almost wishes this team had gone the whole hog and given us the full Twelfth Night musical.

This is a visually ravishing, thoughtfully subversive take on a familiar text, for the most part illuminating rather than reinventing what’s already there. Director Horsley attacks the play with an iconoclastically fresh eye, tempered with a formidable understanding of the riches of Shakespeare’s creation. I didn’t laugh as much as I expected, but I found myself thinking about it on the way home perhaps far more than any other interpretation I’ve seen. A rewarding, vitalising piece of theatre.