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Some productions may be born great, some achieve greatness and some may have greatness thrust upon them. This production of Twelfth Night, however, achieves the second of these criteria because the cast, the director and all those involved with Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre imbue everything about it with vim, vigour, verve and vitality.
Director, Alex Clifton, has taken Shakespeare’s heady humour and made it ultimately accessible by accentuating the duplicity, love and out-and out pomposity that each of the individual character has to display as much of it is taken up with the comic subplot, in which several characters conspire to make Olivia's pompous head steward, Malvolio, believe that his lady Olivia wishes to marry him. To this end, Matthew Rixon is quite simply superb, turning in a performance in that is a cross between Mathew Kelly and Stephen Fry that makes the audience cringe and roar with laughter at each turn of his yellow stockinged calves.
Superb, too, are Chris Vincent as Feste, the wise fool who makes a dishonest guinea wherever he can, Jack Lord as the permanently drunk Sir Toby Belch, whose mischief making is made all the more hilarious by his audience interaction, and Scott Arthur as Andrew Aguecheek, Toby’s stooge.
However it is Krupa Pattani as Viola, the maid disguised as Olivia’s manservant who really stands out thanks to a heavy dose of enthusiasm and energy which underline this productions completeness.
With the wind blowing through the trees and the odd spot of rain in the air, this could easily have become a production of The Tempest, yet thanks to this exquisitely talented cast, Twelfth Night – a festive tale staged in this instance in high summer – is an absolute triumph.
9/10
Twelfth Night
Grosvenor Park, Chester
July 6 – August 19 (Selected Dates)
Author: William Shakespeare
Director: Alex Clifton
Producer: Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre
Cast Includes: Krupa Pattani, Jack Lord, Matthew Rixon, Chris Vincent, Victoria Gee, Sarah Lambie, Jonathan Glew, Ellen O’Grady, Mark Rose, Haseeb Malik, Tom Radford, Chris Lindon
Running Time: 2 hrs 30 mins.
.JPG)
