A glorious Shakespearean romp
A delightful way to spend a Monday afternoon, the Executive Committee is to be congratulated on bringing something different to the Monthly meeting. As members departed the improvised theatre, there were mutterings of: “We want more meetings like this.” Ian Nash
Twelfth Night is one of the most engaging of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies and the Festival Players International excelled in lifting our spirits and making us laugh throughout their performance to a capacity crowd at the Hertford & District u3a June monthly meeting. The delightfully silly plot ain’t simple in its focus on a convoluted love triangle. Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia. However, mourning for her brother, she has rejected all his advances. Meanwhile, brother and sister, Sebastian and Viola, have survived a shipwreck, though each believes the other is dead. Viola disguises herself as a youth (Cesario) to serve in court. Orsino sends Cesario with love letters to woo Olivia for him. Unfortunately for the Duke, Olivia is taken in by Cesario’s disguise and falls in love with him. This comedy of disguise and deception was all the more hilarious for being performed by an all-male cast, exactly as the Bard intended for 17th century audiences. It creates the ultimate conceit in theatre. Viola is a boy playing a girl playing a boy. (S)he is indistinguishable from a boy playing a boy – her brother Sebastian. Amidst this we have boys playing Olivia and Maria, the maid. Brother and sister are finally reunited and the love triangle is resolved into two couples: Sebastian loves Olivia, and Viola loves Orsino. Getting there is a delight for the audience as the plot abounds with rich characters including Olivia’s disreputable drunken uncle Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Olivia’s irksome servant Malvolio and her other servants, Maria, Feste and Fabia. So many moments in the Festival Players’ performance brought the house down included Feste the clown’s minstrel renditions on guitar, Malvolio’s efforts to keep smiling while sucking up to Olivia and the antics of Andrew Aguecheek’s performance as an upper-class idiot worthy of Monty Python.