Review: TWELFTH NIGHT, Drayton Arms Theatre

If music be the food of love, cocaine was the food of Disco. We’re back in the age of big ‘fros, big shoes and big lapels as the hookiest hooks ever laid down on vinyl bring the vibe, baby! Yes,  we may be upstairs above a pub in West London, but we’re really downstairs at Studio 54 in Manhattan. It’s Twelfth Night Fever!!

Adapted and directed by Gavin McAlinden for The Acting Gymnasium, an early career cast is inevitably uneven - but who cares? It’s all such fun and so funny (I’ve never heard the notorious double entendres come thicker and faster) that you’re swept away with the energy and the wit. In venues like this, the palpable hits of pleasure felt on stage infect us in the stalls instantaneously.

Much of that connection comes from the line readings, in fringe productions an oft-neglected aspect of Shakey’s genius. Leading the way as Viola / Cesario, with the look of an Equus-era Jenny Agutter and the presence too, is Molly Hockham, who, apart from some very nice fourth wall breaching when ogling Duke Orsino’s muscles (Charles Worthington, very buff) plays it largely straight. That allows the chaos to unfurl around her, her disbelief growing at both her situation and her fluttering heart.

Orchestrating much of dodgy doings is the bartender, Maria, a sly-smiling Rachael Sparkes, who, with sidekicks, Aryan Chavda and Stephan Saintclair as the boozy Sir Toby Belch and the dim Sir Andrew Aguecheek, play their cruel tricks on Malvolio. 

Helen Probert gives the authoritarian steward the air of a straitlaced Elton John (you can imagine it if you really try) and the severity of his punishment seems as disproportionate as ever to his ‘crimes’. Given the simple staging, his dark imprisonment is more abstract than real, which rather imits the force of his powerful parting warning, but it’s hard not to think of his tormentors, provoked as they might be, as juvenile shits.

Prilly Lee takes no time to ditch her widow’s weeds as Olivia and lust after the boy/girl Viola/Cesario. That felt a little overcooked early on, but the payoff comes at the end with the big reveal when you can’t help but feel the joy, the grieving woman deserving her day in the sun - and her spectacular red dress.

And joy is the right word for this production which, if you don’t mind your teen kids asking about the funny little plastic bags on the table in front of Sir Toby, is an ideal introduction to Shakey’s works and can demystify them at the start of the GCSE driven academic year. I laughed as often as I have in years watching his comedies, but never at the expense of the lyricism in the speeches and the psychological excavation of both love and lust, concerns never far from the surface in his plays. 

I suspect the man himself might not recognise the polish of some big productions of this play that does, after all, demand a large cast of characters, but I’m sure he would appreciate the somewhat rough and ready quality of this production. The Bard never saw a crowd that he didn’t want to please and this production is a stone cold crowdpleaser - and all the better for it! 

Twelfth Night runs at at the Drayton Arms Theatre until 26 September

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