Twelfth Night

Howard Theatre, 7.30pm, 6th – 9th October, £5/£7

Directed by Chloe Mashiter

[rating:3/5]

A shaky few opening scenes, following a late start (admittedly, this did give my stupid plus one time to arrive), made for a disappointing beginning to a production that has had a tour of Japan to hone itself. And Twelfth Night wasn’t honed.

Lines were delivered clumsily and were frequently accompanied by some of the most awkwardly semaphorical hand gestures ever to have caused distraction in theatre – particularly noticeable in Max Levine’s Orsino, but common enough to seem almost like a deliberate, weirdly misjudged, directorial decision. The cast’s overall energy seemed low, and aside from a great performance from Sam Sloman (whose Feste was as funny as I’ve ever seen a man with a ukulele be) things didn’t look promising.

The evening was brought to life, however, with the entrance of Sir Toby Belch, played with a wonderful campness by Andrew Brock. Like a Disney Uncle Monty, he (like Feste) showed a great combination of acting talent and demonstrated the production’s overall directorial creativity.

Joshua Stamp-Simon’s Andrew Aguecheek, while less originally imagined, was brilliantly performed, and their scenes together were consistently entertaining. My only criticism would be that Sir Toby in particular seemed to lack a character arc. The only noticeable change in his drunkenness was that signposted by a costume change,  and by the end of the play his character hadn’t progressed to anything new. Brock gave the impression of a man who had stolen the show on better nights, and his ability was obvious, but I suspect that the repetitive nature of the Japan tour may have led to him losing some of the complexity that the character should involve.