Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, dir. Peter Hall: review

Twelfth Night has always been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays (and not least because, at the risk of sounding like Polonius, I once played Malvolio...). It inhabits a territory that points towards the weird, late romances (which I favour over the comedies): a shipwreck, lost children, revelations. It is as full of wonder as any of the romances. It's also supremely well-knit, spare and tight, each word doing the job of three or four, its verbal dexterity and shot-silk quality embodied in the words of Feste.

The staging of Sir Peter Hall's production at the National Theatre was also spare. Viola (played by a charmingly gawky Rebecca Hall) stood at the beginning, bereft of everything she has known, her back towards the man who will help her. Orsino's (Martin Csokas) luxurious court was hinted at by three or four cushions (Orsino himself looked like a cushion, wearing a brilliantly long dressing gown of the type which I wish they still made. Barry Lyndon wears one in the Kubrick film, too.) The bare stage focused attention on the actors.

On the aristocratic side, Orsino was debauched, world-weary, commanding his group of courtiers with a languid finger. By contrast, Olivia (Amanda Drew), mourning her brother, was controlled and clearly able to run her household. It struck me that perhaps Olivia senses something missing in Viola - another lost brother - which might aid her infatuation. Drew was almost matronly, which belied her passion; my only difficulty was that one of her best lines ('lips - indifferent red') was swallowed. Sebastian (Ben Mansfield) was a fine, swashbuckling type, although with a slight femininity which maybe draws the captain to him, and helps us to understand the confusion between brother and sister.

Downstairs, Sir Toby Belch was played with malevolent sottishness by Simon Callow. This production really highlighted the cruelty of the trick they play on Malvolio (Simon Paisley Day) - played as a smooth-talking, smooth-dressing major-domo. The imprisonment scene had Malvolio in a tiny cage, blindfolded; with Feste (David Ryall) prancing around him and some sinister violin shrieking, the effect was positively hellish. Sir Andrew Aguecheek was absolutely marvellous, I thought. His foppishness and vanity were given an amiable touch, and Charles Edwards' face provoked many of the biggest laughs. When Malvolio stormed in and shouted 'do you make an alehouse of my lady's?' he nodded fervently as if he were a schoolboy who'd been caught by the headmaster.

Twelfth Night is a play with no pat ending. Malvolio's last line, 'I'll be revenged - on the whole pack of you!' resonated loudly, and pointed towards the ambiguity of the solution to everyone's problems. Only Viola gets her true love; Olivia makes do with a copy, whilst Orsino's decision is based on practicality.

And Feste - when I first saw him I thought they'd made a terrible mistake. He was old, shrivelled. But then as the play went on I realised what a masterstroke it was. To have him singing 'youth's a stuff will not endure' gains extra poignancy. Feste's wildly wisecracking wit turns everything on its head: the fool is no fool, and Ryall's wizened old man showed in bold colours quite how full of wisdom he is. He sang in a slightly-out of tune warble (though trying to get the audience to join in at the end was not a good idea, I thought.)

It was a stately production, perhaps a little lacking in energy, but that added to its sense of elegy. 'Come Away Death', let's not forget, is one of the songs in it; and the Fool's song is repeated in King Lear.

I'll never forget my school production of Twelfth Night. One of the boys in my year, Will Ings, had composed a tune for 'Come Away...' It was haunting, and beautifully effective, and I wish I had a recording. It surfaced in my mind towards the end, and I was nearly brought to tears.

[I still harbour a deep love of the film version with Helena Bonham-Carter.]

Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris: Review

Yesterday was a day of rain sliding out of the sky in sheets, of cloudy hot skies, of cocktails and mussels and balconies. I went to see Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square. As I queued to buy a packet of Cheese and Chive crisps, a rather small but very polite young man walked past me and apologised for getting in my way. What a nice young man! I thought. They do still teach manners! The nice young man turned out, of course, to be Daniel Radcliffe, presumably on a night off from wizardry and Harry Potter.

We (not me and Daniel, of course) had seats right up in the rafters, which made it feel as if we were watching a puppet show. The first half took place in a stereotypical American household. The wife, in a New Look dress and pinafore, demonstrating intelligence but totally desperate, watched her husband loaf around in his pyjamas, mourning the death of his son. Things progress: it appears that a black family is moving into their house, and the neighbours are not happy. I felt that this act had too much in it: racism, the suggestion of hidden tragedy; it felt bitty, whilst the characters did not live and (even the wife) seemed to be merely mouthpieces - puppets, even. One touch of originality was the racist resident's association leader's deaf wife; but even she seemed played for laughs rather than any deeper meaning. Everything was contrived: a trunk was buried (no doubt for future significance), a colander served as an awkward sign of condescension. (Incidentally, I laid a bet with my companion: every 'issue' had been touched upon - gender, disability, racism - so there was a good chance the second half would have a gay character in it.)

But the second half was like a magnesium flare in the darkness. The curtains opened on the same set: but the house was now decayed. Now the neighbourhood was almost totally black, and a middle class white couple was moving in. The same actors appeared in new guises: the once silent maid now reincarnated as a sassy black woman; the suburban mother as a loudspoken lawyer. Martin Freeman (most famous perhaps, at the moment, for putting a stapler in a jelly, but here showing his real skill) went from playing the slimy, pedantic, wordy residents' association leader, to an articulate, bewildered husband. Norris played cleverly with our notions of offence: as a white middle class person, I go through life wondering why most people are so offended by things all the time; a joke the black woman says (after much goading by the others) caused me (and the rest of the audience) to have a sharp intake of breath - and then to think how absurd it was to be offended at all.

The play neatly showed the links between this new society and the one that had gone before. It ended with everybody storming off: and then had a quiet, poignant coda, which showed how fragile we all are anyway. (Oh, and I won the bet by the way - the male lawyer turned out to be gay.)

Tales of Terror: Oxford Drama School

Swiss Cottage was the unlikely, faux-bosky setting last night for the Oxford Drama School's production of new writing, Terror Tales, in the Michael Frayn Space. It's a theatre so cosy that watching a play in it is a bit like being in your own living room, although without any convenient cushions to hide behind. However, I found that a glass of red wine performs a similar function: you just have to remember not to sit on it when you've stopped being frightened.

There were seventeen young actors, and not a weak link among them. The stage set was uncluttered, boxy, with a slight hint of suburban claustrophobia. The general theme was normal situations twisting into darkness: a girls' night in morphs into a possible murder scene; an interview with a nanny shifts into something altogether more sinister.

One of the strongest scenes was when two flatmates discover a burglar and tie him up. Charlie and Graham had a tender relationship, with Graham as the protector (Charlie, a B and Q worker, is so hapless that he can fall over a leaf.) Andrew Gower was a superbly timid Charlie, with Daniel Hallissey as a waveringly cocksure Graham. Hubert Hanovic (in one of many well-played, slightly creepy roles) was the hostage. At one point Graham grabbed a kitchen implement to threaten the intruder. 'If I was made of soup that might work,' said the hostage. It was a wooden spoon.

Also very strong was a scene between a beautiful young teacher who calls in a student to 'help her with iTunes' (now there's a new euphemism if ever I heard one). Pandora McCormick struck an excellent balance between sexual confidence slipping into abject despair; at one moment strutting slinkily around the stage, the next her head in her hands, all her future hopes destroyed. The most interesting in terms of staging was an interrogation which initially appeared to be between a detective and a murder suspect: the two actors, however, faced the audience. This direct approach had the effect of involving the audience and making us feel that perhaps we too were on trial.

It was an excellent production (directed by DryWrite), and it is heartening and immensely spiriting to see a batch of fine talents enter the world. The last scene, which took place on the tube, began as a derivative, almost slapstick zombie attack, but as the cast gradually succumbed to the voodoo spell and turned on the audience, I suddenly became very glad that I had a few gulps of wine left in my glass.