Skip to main content

Twelfth Night


King's Theatre, Edinburgh
Three stars

If William Shakespeare was the original gender bender, the current emancipation of non-binary identity politics suggests the world is slowly catching up with him. Enter Merely Theatre, the young company currently working with an agenda of stripped-down, gender-neutral renditions of the bard's finest works. With male and female performers 'twinned' to play a particular set of roles, the boy/girl permutations in Merely's five actor versions of the plays are seemingly endless.

What this means in the first of two productions touring in tandem is a carnivalesque knockabout rom-com, which begins with a sort-of sing-along, as Tamara Astor's Feste takes the opening 'If music be the food of love' line literally. This sets the tone, as Emmy Rose's shipwrecked Viola puts on the mantle of what looks like a sailor on shore leave called Cesario in order to cosy up to Hannah Ellis' local high hid' yin, Duke Orsino. Sarah Peachey's Olivia in turn falls for 'Cesario', but also has a suitor in Robert Myles' uptight Malvolio. This inspires Toby Belch, also played by Ellis, to prank Malvolio into thinking he's party to Olivia's fetish for bright yellow hosiery.

While such casting is by no means new, Scott Ellis' production nevertheless makes free with the sort of cross-gender playfulness that is inherent in Shakespeare's work, which subverted the restrictions of his day. Beyond his own lines, this allows too for a hip to the minute contemporary pop parlance that lends things a youthful zest. As the cast run riot in the auditorium at various points, co-opting audience members as they go, an anarchic streak which seems more akin to street theatre reigns throughout a boisterous piece of cartoon fun.

The Herald, September 25th 2017

ends
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Art School Dance Goes On Forever – Snapshots Of Masters Of The Multiverse

Intro – Snapshots – Deaf School

1

In 1980, the same year as the Manchester band, Magazine, released a 7
inch single called A Song From Under The Floorboards – a three verse
and chorus distillation of Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes From Underground
– an art school scandal occurred.

This scandal took place in Liverpool, and was based around a project
called the Furbelows, although it became better known in the Liverpool
Echo and other organs that reported it as the Woolly Nudes.

The Furbelows, or Woolly Nudes, were a group of artists who had come
out of Liverpool College of Art, who, dressed in grotesque woolly
costumes which featured knitted approximations of male and female
genitalia, made assorted public interventions around the city centre as
kind of living sculptures acting out assorted narratives.

The Furbelows project had been funded by what was then Merseyside Arts
Association, and, after the participants were arrested and taken to
court on obscenity charges after what…
Post a Comment
Read more

Peter Brook – The Prisoner

Peter Brook is no stranger to Scotland, ever since the guru of European and world theatre first brought his nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata, to Glasgow in 1988. That was at the city’s old transport museum, which by 1990 had become Tramway, the still-functioning permanent venue that opened up Glasgow and Scotland as a major channel for international theatre in a way that had previously only been on offer at Edinburgh International Festival.
Brook and his Paris-based Theatre des Bouffes du Nord company’s relationship with Tramway saw him bring his productions of La Tragedie de Carmen, La Tempete, Pellease et Mellisande, The Man Who…, and Oh Les Beaux Jours – the French version of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days – to Glasgow.
Thirty years on from The Mahabharata, Brook comes to EIF with another piece of pan-global theatre as part of a residency by Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, which Brook has led since he decamped to Paris from London in the early 1970s. The current Edinburgh residency has alr…
Post a Comment
Read more

Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare's Globe Comes to Glasgow

Open-air Shakepeares are a summer-time perennial of the theatre calendar, attracting picnicking audiences as much as midges. More often than not, such romps through the grass are frothy, heritage industry affairs designed to be accompanied by strawberries and cream and not to be taken too seriously. Shakespeare’s Globe theatre company look set to change such perceptions when they open their outdoor tour of Romeo And Juliet in Glasgow next week as part of the West End festival.

For the two young actors taking the title roles of the doomed lovers, it will also be something of a homecoming. Richard Madden and Ellie Piercy both studied in Glasgow prior to turning professional. Indeed, Madden has yet to graduate from the acting course at RSAMD, and, as well as facing the pressures of playing such a meaty role in close proximity to the audience, will have the added anxiety of being assessed and graded by his tutors.

“This is the end of my third year,” says Madden following a Saturday mornin…
Post a Comment
Read more