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PATRICK MARMION theatre review: A tale of two Twelfth Nights... but which one's top?
Now the 12 days of Christmas are upon us, who comes out on top in two festive stagings of Shakespeare's midwinter comedy?
His charming show features a lovely cast of old-timers — Oliver Ford Davies as a lugubrious Malvolio, Clive Francis as a hell- raising duffer Sir Toby and Jane Asher as an impish, mischievous housekeeper, Maria — along with younger, up-and-coming actors. Pianist Stefan Bednarczyk ingeniously turns his role of the fool into that of a Noel Cowardish compere, remaining at the keyboard almost throughout, providing cheeky sound effects and eliciting the occasional lump in the throat with melancholy songs and sonatas. This fresh generation of hissing, writhing, stamping swans are even more muscular, mesmerising and menacing; the Queen, the image of Princess Margaret in a sumptuous New Look gown, is an even more glacial, unreachable mother, the Prince an even more confused, isolated son.
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