Poor Monster. The 1980 BBC Twelfth Night.

December 15, 2017

twelfth night

Twelfth Night is a heartwrenchlingly beautiful play full of poetry that delights the ear and yet is emotionally truthful. Its conclusion is bitter-sweet because the people who seem most truthfully attracted to one another do not end up with one another at the end.

Were the play to eschew heteronormative convention and merely reward the true quality of loves that we have already witnessed – then Viola would marry Olivia, Antonio would marry Sebastian and Orsino would marry himself.

Heteronormative convention isn’t some sorry cop out in this instance, but a rueful acknowledgement of the world as is (or was) rather than as it might be.

This particular production is still wedded to producer Cedric Messina’s insistence on “realism”. Although shot in a studio, Olivia’s house looks very real indeed and both indoors and out, the eye has plenty of realistic looking props to look at.

And all this realism highlights one particular problem: the non-identical boy girl twin problem. Felicity Kendall plays Viola. Michael Thomas plays someone much taller than Felicity Kendall but with a a Felicity Kendall haircut. It is just possible, that with very very poor lighting, and with everyone as drunk all the time as Sir Toby is by the end of the play, that one “twin” could be mistaken for the other. But to see every sober character onstage gawping in broad daylight at this apple cleft in twain is not convincing. And this is where extreme realism of staging does not help. The more stylised and/or spare the staging, the easier it is to suspend belief. The poetry can do its work of persuading you that these obviously very different people look one and the same rather more effectively if the production is not, simultaneously, trying to persuade you that you’re in a real house in a real street.

I recall playing the role Sebastian myself, many many many years ago on the Isle of Wight with an actor playing Orsino who went on to become famous. Viola and I were both given Kevin Keegan wigs and the illusion of twinning worked pretty well. Our scenery was certainly not “realistic” though – which must have helped.

Of course, television allows you to get around this problem altogether by having the same actor play both Viola and Sebastian. Joan Plowright played both parts in precisely this way in a 1969 TV version. Oddly enough, that production had a far more obviously “theatrical” set which might have been swapped with its BBC equivalent of a decade later to some advantage.

John Gorrie’s somewhat unimaginative (Messina imposed) staging means that individual performances dominate one’s perception of this production. We all, of course, fall in love with Felicity Kendall – she’s just dreamy. Everybody my age had/s a crush on Felicity Kendall making dramatic criticism difficult, but the way she punctures Viola’s own tendency to self-pity with humour is just lovely. She is matched, meanwhile, by Sinéad Cusack’s Olivia who adds a playfulness to a role that doesn’t always receive it. Tragically, this majestic Olivia ends up having to marry the wrong person – the vague and clueless Sebastian who ambles amiably into sudden wedlock with all the “what the hell-ness” of Bruno Mars.

Robert Hardy is breezily confident as Belch – that poundstore Falstaff who can’t take his drink. Ronnie Stevens is, dare I say it, rather too old for Aguecheek. He’s the same age as Robert Hardy but looks older. His age gives one more unnecessary reason for him to be an unthinkable consort for Olivia and, sadly, his caperings look rather strained.

Annette Crosbie is splendidly mischievous as Maria and Robert Lindsay begins a long list of contributions to the BBC Shakespeare series with a west-country accented Fabian. He does particularly well while trying to read out Malvolio’s letter at the end. Feste needs to be able to sing and Trevor Peacock can certainly sing. He was a successful songwriter in the 1960s, perhaps most famous for penning “Mrs Brown you’ve got a Lovely Daughter” for Herman’s Hermits. He appears in the superb Jane Howell directed Henry VI plays in the 1980s where he performs both Talbot and a menacing Jack Cade. In Twelfth Night, Peacock uses his slightly menacing and angular features to excel as Sir Topas, someone who really could command a central role in a nightmarish Spanish Inquisition movie.

Which leaves Alec McCowan as Malvolio. Funny thing about Malvolio – although Maria refers to him as a kind of puritan – there’s really very little that’s authentically puritanical about the character. Malvolio invokes Jove, not God, in support of his endeavours (although some attribute this to a very specific edict censoring religious oaths on stage around this period). Malvolio’s desires are centred in this world not the next, and his fantasies of social advancement are heartfelt, elegant and, when expressed by Alec McCowan, rather moving. Does he love Olivia or does he just love the idea of the idea of putting down Toby? No matter – he is capable of love – his spirit is lofty – and that’s more than you can say of Toby who is – when all is said and done – an abusive arse.

Antonio is one of the greatest comparatively small parts in the whole of Shakespeare. Maurice portrays a man love for Sebastian is unambiguous and unconditional. No love in this play is purer, and the play concludes with us having to regard the lonely Antonio as collateral damage in a play that refuses to offer closure for everybody on stage.

I’ve some thoughts about some other 1978-1985 BBC Shakespeare productions.

Here is Othello: