York Theatre Royal – 18 May 2017. Reviewed by Marcus Richardson
So I went to Romeo And Juliet on Tuesday and then I went to see Twelfth Night on Thursday. Two Shakespeare plays and one company, what I wasn’t prepared for was it was the same cast; I only found out when looking in the program for R+J and found it was the SAME cast. At first I was a bit cautious, but oh lord! Sometimes the talent of cast will amaze me beyond belief.
The comedy which involves cross dressing and stockings alike will make anyone laugh. With every actor taking on another role in twelfth night I would’ve expected some performances to be lacking in energy and finesse, but I loved to be proved wrong. It was just as much perfection as you would expect than any other show. The main character of Viola dresses up like a man and ends up causing a lot of chaos and confusion, played by Rebecca Lee who did a suburb job of creating and working with such a hilarious character and even more hilarious situation.
Another actor who stood out was also the actor who stood out in R+J, Lauryn Redding who played the drunkard Sir Toby Belch an extravagant man who likes to cause the drama. It would be rude of me not to mention Peter Dukes who played Malvolio the steward of Olivia a Countess, a snobbish character who then ends up doing both unspeakable and hilarious acts for love.
The Set had a lot of similarities with the R+J set with the same structure but different ways of using it and presenting it. I loved the use of this as it shows how much thought and creativity went into producing both of these shows. All the actors played instruments again, and I have to say I lost track of how many instruments each of the actors could play.
With it being set in the 1920s the music and dance style had to be jazz and I know as much as anyone, jazz is very hard to do, with so many instruments it can be easy to lose the rhythm and the power of music, but this wasn’t the case.
I personally enjoyed this show more than R+J but that’s because I love comedies, I found myself entertained throughout all of the play, I felt like it was fast paced and each of the actors had amazing moments on stage and worked together to create a Shakespeare comedy which can be a hard task.