Twelfth Night or What You Will

29th Jan '10 by Andy

First of all – my experience of Shakespeare is limited – I will admit that from the outset, but I know what I like, and this production of Twelfth Night was outstanding, without a single weak link. Every actor seemed to bring their own to the performance making for a uniquely darkly comic interpretation of this outstanding play. Casting was brilliance for every part but our famous stars were not out of place, instead they were brilliantly placed and brought their own character to the roles; Malvolio couldn’t have been better cast than Richard Wilson (One Foot in the Grave’s - Victor Meldrew) who was born for the part, and brought his comic persona and facial expressions to some truly hilarious moments. James Fleet (Vicar of Dibley’s - Hugo) played a dim-witted knight in the form of Sir Andrew Aguecheek; bringing real comic relief to even the darkest moment, accompanied by his lack of grasp of the Shakespearian tongue to really nail home the characters ineptness.

However the real star of the show was Feste (Olivia’s Fool) played by Miltos Yerolemou, his singing, dancing and dark comedy shaped the show and brought everything together to form this wonderful piece of theatre. I thoroughly recommend a trip to the Duke of York theatre to check this out, whether you’re a Shakespeare fan or not.

As a side note if you’re after somewhere to stay on a one night stop can I recommend the Arosfa Hotel (it’s small, but extremely friendly and very clean and comfy).