A Christmas Treat December 31, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , trackbackTo my ten year old eyes, I, Claudius brought ancient Rome to seedy, violent, enthralling life, and imprinted Derek Jacobi in my mind as the stammering, limping Claudius. Since then, I’ve occasionally seen him on TV, but never on the stage.
So to see him in the Michael Grandage’s production of Twelfth Night for the Donmar, as the pompous, tricked and finally rather sad Malvolio was a special Boxing Day treat. After a year of histories, tragedy, and challenging comedy, it is fun to watch a Shakespeare that is just a happy romp.
This is, to quote the West End Whingers, the gender bending one with yellow socks. If you’re not familiar with the plot, the Wikipedia entry describes it well.
Jacobi’s performance is classic physical clowning. As he reads the letter from his boss, the beautiful Olivia, telling him how she fancies him, and wants him to behave, his preening and facepulling had the audience in fits.
Indira Varma as Olivia is a joy to watch as she moved from stern, correct mourner to schoolgirl crush to enthusiastic seducer of Sebastian (who couldn’t believe his luck) though she must be a bit shortsighted to take the voluptuous Victoria Hamilton’s Viola for any sort of boy.
Seat B26 in the dress circle gave an excellent view, although not much legroom. Twelfth Night plays at Wyndham’s Theatre until 7 March 2009.
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[...] but that’s the material she had to work with. Mark Bonnar (last seen as Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night) is a fine Aeneas, genuinely torn between his love of Dido and his duty to his [...]
[...] second murderer) seems to be everywhere lately, and is slowly growing on me. His Sebastian in the Donmar’s start-studded Twelfth Night was fairly innocuous, and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t particularly register him in [...]