Twelfth Night: Second Impressions

The Globe on a balmy evening

This production of Twelfth Night is coming dangerously close to knocking Hamlet off its previously unassailable pedestal as my favourite Shakespeare play!

Yesterday I saw it for the second time, at the evening performance and as a paying groundling this time. The Globe looks very pretty at night, with loops of fairy lights strung along the galleries. Despite the morning radio forecast, it did not rain (!) - in fact it was a lovely balmy evening. 

I think the best thing about this production is the way the actors interact with the audience, and how the dynamics of this interaction change slightly with every performance. There was a good deal of ad libbing yesterday, to hilarious effect. At one point someone accidentally dropped a bag of crisps from one of the Lord's Boxes onto the stage. Malvolio picked it up and strolled around the stage laconically eating its contents (it was during the yellow-stockinged-and-cross-gartered scene); then Maria snatched it off him and tossed it straight back up into the box, where it was neatly fielded by one of the audience sitting there.

Then during one of the Sebastian-and-Antonio scenes, Sebastian produced a camera, handed it to one of the groundlings near the stage, and got him to take a photo, just as a modern-day tourist might do. Despite being anachronistic with the rest of the costuming and staging, it was so very funny, and in fact quite in keeping with the tone of the scene, which is Sebastian-as-tourist:

Sebastian: "Shall we go see the relics of the town?

[...]

Antonio: "... I will bespeak our diet,

Whiles you beguile the time, and feed your knowledge

With viewing of the town." (III.3)

In the final scene, when saying, "Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace," Olivia gestured to another of the groundlings, gesticulating that she should follow him - which, after a good deal of encourgement, she did, to much mirth.

But the biggest laugh of the night was probably reserved for Olivia's rapturous gasp of "Most wonderful" when finally confronted with the two twins!

You can read more about this production here. Do go and see it if you can, but you will probably have to be a groundling, for seated tickets have practically sold out for the rest of the run. But it is great fun, and there is a very nice bar, with very comfy seats, to which you can retreat in the interval for a little pick-me-up if you get tired of standing :D