Twelfth Night

This play was updated to 1980’s and it worked very well with appropriate music and costumes. The story of mistaken identities cross-dressing, the true love that can never run smooth was a typical Shakespeare plot but this update made it easier to understand.

Viola (Rachael Watson Lyon) and her twin Sebastian (Louise Marsh) actually looked alike, which is not always the case, again this helped with the story.

As in previous productions, I only saw one set of characters and as always, I can only comment on the cast that I saw.

Viola (Rachael Watson Lyon) gave us a clever performance and the scenes where Olivia (Lisa Riddington) falls in love with her were well done and very entertaining. The changing of Malvolio to Malvolia (Holly Riordan) brought this play bang up to date and worked very well. It updated the play without changing the story, and it was a very good performance.

The “double act” of Sir Andrew Aguecheek (James Evans) and Sir Toby Belch (Ashley Pearce) kept us well entertained throughout and even gave us a rendition of a Wham classic. Well done both.

The other recurring characters we Clown/Feste (Scott Williams) and Maria (Kirsty Waters) and their performances added a lot to the production.

The costumes were typical 80’s and the more traditional costumes did not seem out of date in that era.

Shakespeare, like Gilbert and Sullivan, sometimes needs to be update to make it appeal to a younger, less traditional audience, and I have now seen two productions by his Society that have done just that.

Well done to all involved.

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