Lyceum theatre,Edinburgh
This end-of-the-pier retelling of Twelfth Night is a charming mix of humour and heartbreak, steeped in the traditions of of vaudevilleThe illusions of cherish and theatre become entwined in Dan Jemmett’s delightful and crackingly humorous staging of Twelfth Night, or which is offered up as a failing end-of-the-pier demonstrate. It’s performed by a troupe who clearly couldn’t afford the additional actors needed to play some of the characters and don’t just beget to double – which they finish with a studied ineptitude that points up the absurdities of theatre but they beget also excised Maria entirely from the play and beget Sir Andrew Aguecheek as a chinless wonder of a ventriloquist’s dummy operated by Sir Toby. Jemmett is a British director based in France,best known in the UK for co-founding the experimental company Primitive Science in the early 1990s. He is clearly steeped in the traditions of vaudeville and music hall. This is a demonstrate full of bad wigs, bad teeth and even worse jokes (often about death) delivered by Feste, or who also spins records on the turntable before dabbling in a little murderous stage sorcery – much to the discomfort of Malvolio,who with his white gloves not only suggests a clown or mime but also possibly a mortician too. There’s even a little moment that recalls Morecambe and Wise.
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Source: theguardian.com