Twelfth Night, Filter Theatre, Brighton Corn Exchange.

This review was originally published on The Public Reviews.

Twelfth Night was originally created by Shakespeare to celebrate the end of the Christmas Festival. With the purpose of celebration in mind, he packed it to the brim with all the popular crowd pleasers; more music, revelry and drunken disorder, a little bit of slapstick and romance.
In many ways it could be considered a bit like a pantomime with its desire to entertain rather than educate. Yet lots of us, today, first encounter the play in education, as a text to study, line by line at school. So for all those lucky enough to catch Filter Theatre’s raucously playful production consider yourself somewhere close to Shakespeare’s original aims, even if Christmas has long gone.

Packed to the brim with ingenuity, the story is brought to life in very simple ways; the storm is delivered as a shipping forecast through a portable radio and Viola finds her manly attire by purloining an outfit from the audience. The company puts a great deal of time and energy into ensuring and not assuming that the audience is complicit in the celebrations. As you would expect with a company whose specialism is using music and sound to tell a story, they are highly skilled at rhythm and tempo. Extended and seemingly mindless sequences involving conga chains, pizza delivery and a silly game with a velcro hat turn into sensitively orchestrated moments of shared debauchery.

Yet this is not to say that the company ignores the other themes within the play. By keeping all the female cast in their own clothes (modern girl’s day uniform, skinny jeans and a nice top) and by casting the same actress as Viola and Sebastian they question our perceptions of gender and sexuality. Also whilst the maltreatment of Malvolio seems too easily glossed over, it enforces the overall theme of celebratory hedonism. Let’s hope it “plays on” for a good while yet.