Improbable fiction upon a stage

The charming ambience of Southwark Playhouse greets us with a charismatic mixture of bar, flexible theatre space and creativity hub. It is clear that this venue wants to break convention. Getting access to the performance room means exchanging a ticket for a wristband, gliding past a rainbow of hanging cloth strips, finding a seat in a square arena to the sound of electronic drones and chatting to the cast while waiting for everyone to settle in. All set for a “music-festival-like” welcome to the party-hard land of Illyria, where, amidst some energetic dance moves, each actor introduces their (multiple) characters and the accompanying outfit changes. This was rather unnecessary: spelling out everything dumbs down the audience.

Often the background music or the shouting of other players is too loud to allow the words to be heard, and the clumsy attempts to introduce modern songs that contrast oddly with the archaic language create an overall sense of displacement and lack of direction. Some details in the plot are overlooked, making it hard to understand circumstances and to follow later developments. New as I am to the world of Shakespeare, I only understood the relationship between Olivia, the Duke and Sir Toby, or the reasons that led Viola to disguise herself as a man, upon arriving home and reading relevant Wikipedia pages. The unexplained change in one character’s gender, with resulting language and context quirks, makes a plot already full of cross-dressing and mistaken identities even more muddled. And some moments are purely distasteful, with professional entertainers waving along to their own bad singing like shy teenagers in a school-day production.

Credit must be given to a couple of features, though. Fighting scenes are remarkably comic (I refuse to spoil!), as are the built-in interactions with the public. Take a seat in the front row at your own risk! I was just one seat away from my shot at the stage and had to turn my neck a couple of times to face the actors. The way misbehaving props were dealt with was also graciously comical, so much so that I was left wondering if it was a real accident or if I had just been fooled. Special mention to the inclusivity element: one of the characters is mute, with others voicing over. Actress Caroline Parker worked with sign language interpreters to master this role. Quite a contrast, given her other character’s violent loquaciousness! Her all-around brilliant performance clearly stole the show at every chance.

The best of this production is really the light-heartedness, comical joy imbued in every scene. After all these years, and in the hands of competent actors, Shakespeare’s wit keeps making everyone laugh.

-2 stars