Dundee Rep Theatre, then touring 2004

ONE OF the great advantages of Dundee Rep having a permanent company of actors is that touring is relatively easy. If it has a successful show that deserves to be seen more widely, it doesn’t have to regroup the actors or worry about their salaries, which are budgeted for already. And happily, the company has been clocking up a fair number of successful shows, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night included.

The play is a dark comedy of mistaken identity. After a shipwreck, Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are split up, each presuming the other dead. When she goes in disguise as a man (hey, this is Shakespeare, remember) not only does she cause the noble Olivia (Irene Macdougall) to fall in love with her, but also she gets taken for her brother. Confusion abounds until the end of the play.

Director Dominic Hill has put together a superb production that has an assured grasp of the comic elements and also an intriguing sense of unease. Amid all the confusion, the actors are in a state of bewilderment, forever on a quest to find themselves and looking genuinely troubled by it all. It is frequently funny, but that’s often because the actors play it so straight. Their dilemmas are real and they don’t go fishing for laughs.

That said, John Bett gives a crowd-pleasing turn as the pompous drunk Sir Toby Belch and there’s much merriment to be had at the fooling of John Buick’s Malvolio, duped into wearing an outrageous outfit in the belief that he’ll catch Olivia’s eye. Thane Bettany as Feste also has a funny scene with the onstage piano that can miraculously play by itself.

On a more serious note, Emily Pollet is excellent as a fresh-faced Viola and the surrealist set by Tom Piper brilliantly creates a dislocated sense of being at once inside and out, half-drawing room, half-beach. The whole thing flows smoothly without interruption, keeping the focus on the well-honed skills of the actors, and displaying a rewarding level of detail and maturity.

Dundee Rep Theatre’s Twelfth Night is at the Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, from Wednesday 4-Saturday 7 February 2004.

© Mark Fisher, 2004