Review: Twelfth Night at The Orange Tree

There’s much to enjoy in Tom Littler’s seasonal revels at the Orange Tree, his inventive staging of Twelfth Night brings an entirely new perspective to Shakespeare’s classic tale of mistaken identity and star-crossed romance.

Running from 23 November 2024 to 25 January 2025.

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OUR VERDICT

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Ellie Kurttz

Set now in the late 1940s with echoes of war casualties all around, the action is dominated by Feste (Stefan Bednarczyk), the nominal ‘Fool’ who rightly says it’s “better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”

He takes centre-stage on a baby grand piano, a giant clockface that slowly revolves lying underneath. This emphasises ‘time’s winged chariot’, which gains new meaning in this post-war incarnation, evocatively designed by Anett Black and Neil Irish.

Indeed Littler has said that for him Twelfth Night is “a comedy tinged with melancholy...this is a play preoccupied by Time” and its casting reflects this with Olivia’s household staffed by a mature set of characters, Oliver Ford-Davies’ magisterial, misguided Malvolio at its heart, finely supported by Jane Asher’s Maria and Clive Francis on top comic form as Olivia’s rambunctious uncle Sir Toby Belch. 

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Ellie Kurttz

In Illyria, every character is grappling with loss or misunderstanding, trying to navigate their way back to balance.

Olivia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) is mourning her brother, Orsino (Tom Kanji) pines for her and Viola (Sex Education’s Patricia Allison) and her brother Sebastian (Tyler-Jo Richardson, making a strong stage debut) are parted by a shipwreck, forcing Viola to don make attire. 

Apparently, Virginia Woolf commented that Twelfth Night ‘trembles on the edge of music’, and so this production certainly places music at its very heart. Feste’s tuneful ruminations on life and love shape most scenes and add a certain frisson to the unfolding drama. 

Ford-Davies brings Olivia’s butler, Mavolio, to a richly absurd life. His romantic delusions and subsequent harsh treatment are given added poignancy by his age. The sight of him in yellow stockings, ‘cross-gartered,’ is both amusing and yet unsettling.

There’s much buffoonery, too, courtesy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek (OT regular Robert Mountford) and complicated mishaps galore before some semblance of change becomes feasible, allowing romance to heal and progress to become a possibility. 

Quirky and bittersweet, it’s the ideal show for those preferring more reflective seasonal delights, yet one that still abounds with much festive fun.