SHAKESPEARE
TWELFTH NIGHT
Regent’s Park

TIM Supple’s Twelfth Night, shown on Channel 4 last year, was always going to be a tough act to follow.
That seminal interpretation set Shakespeare’s celebration of music and spontaneity in a modern, multicultural society. Viola was played by Parminder Nagra, who would hit the big-time as the lead in Bend it Like Beckham.
She played an asylum-seeker separated from her twin in a storm and washed in a strange new world. The elements of loneliness and exile had rarely been touched on before. One reason Shakespeare still dominates the theatrical calendar is his relevance.
But it is hard to justify productions that insist upon historical accuracy and lock away the contemporary parallels in a strange looking bygone era to which we feel little association.
In Twelfth Night, breaking with convention repeatedly gives away to a new and inspiring way of life. To ignore the play’s ethos in its direction seemed contradictory.
Productions like these are rarely memorable and in danger of merging into one – but Twelfth Night is one of the better comedies, and as it was well performed in unique surroundings, it can still be recommended. Martin Jarvis as the wretched Malvolio warmed the crowd on a chilly Monday night.
James Loye played a wiry, specky Sir Andrew Aguecheek, full of foolish wisdom and futility.
Simon Day did not disappoint as the sweet-singing philosopher Feste – the wise fool.
Shakespeare’s title refers to the 12th night after Christmas, the day many take the decorations down. In the play, beneath all the merriment, is a foreboding of what will come when the party ends.
Feste embodies festival, but even he has a sense of tragedy about him. It is Feste who sings us off into the night with the last of his sobering songs “the rain it raineth every day”.
With luck, for the sake of the Open Air Theatre, it will not.

Until September 10
020 7486 2431