Shakespeare’s bitter-sweet comedy is famous for its unrequited love and the heartbreak it brings with it. The characters are all victims of their ambiguous romantic fantasies. The way that Jonathan Munby’s interesting production for English Touring Theatre begins and ends, with all the actors entering and exiting through windows, door and cupboard, seems to suggest that we are watching a dream in which Feste, the clown, perhaps remembers what had happened many years ago when the ship-wrecked Viola disguised herself as a boy, Cesario, and caused such confusion. Certain scenes within the play proper are acted for fantasy. There is a fantastical moment when Rebecca Johnson’s Olivia realizes she is in love and opens the top of her dress and a stream of red rose petals pour from her heart.
One of the most popular comic scenes is when the Puritanical, stuffy and humourless steward, Malvolio, arrives to court Olivia, the great lady of the House, all smiles, in yellow stockings and cross-gartered. It is so unlikely that even Shakespeare doesn’t believe it and has one of the characters say: “If this were played on a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” Hugh Ross’s Malvolio goes even further and drops his trousers, which is even more unlikely. It is as if Ross is frantically making up for the other great comic scene when he finds a letter, which leads him to believe Olivia is in love with him, and which he had acted so seriously there was barely a laugh in it. The comic high spot here is the midnight drunken caterwauling by Sir Toby (David Fielder) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Milo Twomey). Brian Protheroe’s Feste’s singing “O Mistress Mine” is mellifluous.