Cast propels comic success

Twelfth Night, Lowry
OVER recent years the all-male Propeller company’s founder, Edward Hall, has shown himself to be not only a fine director of Shakespeare in general, but a master of Shakespeare’s comedies in particular.

His 2011 “Comedy of Errors” remains one of the most enjoyably daft 400-year-old plays yet seen.

Here the humour is more restrained but no less entertaining, as the company revisits its five-year-old version of “Twelfth Night”.

For those not up to speed, the focus is on frustrated love as shipwrecked twins fall for the island’s dignitaries, the sister Viola posing as a boy to get closer to the local count, who is besotted by Olivia, who is mourning the death of her brother but is actually more than a bit besotted by the count’s new servant, who is the disguised Viola. Easy.

It’s all carefully set up, with drunken relatives (the hilarious Sir Toby Belch — Vince Leigh — and his pal Aguecheek, John Dougall) and servants (Maria and Malvolio) adding their own mischief.

This is a play not just about lightness and comedy but about dark moods and acts too, and both receive appropriate weight in a terrific stately home set, over which storm clouds are gathering.

Hall’s production and his terrific ensemble cast run a carefully-judged course through a play that can seem long-winded in the first hour or so. Hall shrewdly and lightly edits the text and disposes of disposable characters, the result being improved pace. The second half picks up considerably as the carefully set-up storyline tees-up and holes its carefully-plotted comic shots.

The evening flies by entertainingly but without any great sense of depth; when Hall does comedy, he prefers invention and laughs to subtlety: the Irish Feste (Liam O’Brien) playing a priest with a strong Northern Irish accent, for example; or the tap-dancing, or the boxing match (with ring), the garden’s moving statues, electric guitars, great music and much else besides.

Highlight of the evening is as usual the letter scene, when pompous Malvolio reads a letter supposedly from his mistress Olivia, proclaiming her secret love for him.

The scene, played out in the formal gardens of the house, is a masterclass in silly and clever, the stage supernumeraries imitating crows and other distracting noises-on when the prank victim gets wind of onlookers.

This is ensemble playing of a very high order: once again Propeller shows that Shakespearean comedy really is funny.


Twelfth Night runs in repertoire with The Taming of the Shrew until Saturday. Check box office for dates and times