Twelfth Night

The work of Shakespeare is no mean feat for any company to stage, especially within community theatre. ‘Twelfth Night’ is a romantic comedy. The play revolves around a shipwreck where twins Viola and Sebastian are separated. Viola decides to live her life disguised as her brother and in turn has the countess head over heals for her (thinking she is a man). Finally the twins reunite in a humours ending. 

As expected this was a very wordy play, as all of Shakespeare's works are. On the whole it was put across extremely well, with only one prompt on the evening we attended, which is something that should be commended. Occasionally lines seemed to be rushed and delivered very quickly, meaning they were very hard for the audience to process and they were lost. However the character portrayals were performed very well. With a lot of variation between them all, making the play interesting to watch. This play has a very large cast and the society did well to cast it with suitable people for all roles.

Our favourite part of the play was when the comedy trio of Sir Toby, Maria and Sir Andrew, hid behind a fence while their planned trick unfolds in front of them. This was well put together and engaged the whole audience, gathering many laughs. Also the fencing style sword fights were well executed, and the first of these managed to portray the comedy values of the two extremely nervous characters, which neither were 'man' enough to take part in a proper dual.

The split level set was effective and well used with many different entrances and exits being utilised. It was well designed, as many scenes in where able to portray different locations and could comfortably be seen on stage without the need for the set to be moved. Costumes were well fitted and matched the era along with the props.

The technical side of the show was good throughtout. The use of projection onto the shipwreck sails, added a nice modern touch to the staging of this production. But it was only utilised once throughout the show. Lighting was well designed and used to its full potential, emphasising the changes of mood from scene to scene. Sound and echo effects for some of the dialogue was cleverly done and enhanced the production.

Overall the show was a good confident portrayal of a very traditional script, the society and cast should be happy with the high standard of production that they managed to achieve. Finally we would like to thank Blackburn Drama Club for their kind invitation to this production, at their home of Thwaites Empire Theatre. We are looking forward to their next production of ‘Bolt From the Blue‘ in November.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.