Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online Page B

her reward at last in the strange bittersweet Illyrian world. The Old Vic can be happy indeed to have had such a performance as this at its opening. 20
    Sir John Gielgud’s production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1955 with Laurence Olivier as Malvolio, Vivien Leigh as Viola, Paul Daneman as Feste, Maxine Audley as Olivia, and Richard Burton as Sir Toby had been eagerly anticipated. Despite the beauty of the set and Elizabethan costumes and its star cast, Gielgud himself acknowledged that “Somehow the production did not work.” 21 The critic Peter Fleming suggested: “There is a certain lack of heart about this elegant and well-paced production”: Vivien Leigh’s Viola, though “trim, pretty, poised and resourceful,” had a quality of “non-involvement.” Likewise, Olivier’s “brilliant and deeply-considered study of Malvolio” possessed some “inner quality of reserve or detachment.” 22 Billington concluded that “If one had to sum up his performance in a word it would be ‘camp.’ ” 23
    Tyrone Guthrie’s production at the Stratford Festival Ontario in 1957 was more successful in integrating the play’s diverse elements. Siobhan McKenna’s Viola won especial praise:
    With economical grace and shining eye she creates Illyria out of bare boards as divinely as if she had a vision of Heaven … With the security of Miss McKenna’s power, Dr. Guthrie feels free to play his clowns as less silly than is the lamentable tradition. Sir Toby, Maria and Sir Andrew are well-defined characters. 24
    Against these,
    Feste became a sad, ageing fool full of the pathos of his position where he is retained not for his wit but for his length of service. His melancholy, honestly come by, thus makes Malvolio’s even more priggish, rendering his gulling and final turning-off not only poignant, which it always is, but even credible which it seldom is. 25
    Critics were initially confused by Peter Hall’s 1958 production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, now regarded as a classic of its time. John Wain saw it as “a perfect example of how a Shakespeare play can be ripped apart by the twin steel claws of naturalism andgimmickry,” 26 while Alan Brien, having criticized every aspect of the production, concluded: “Mr Hall is wrong and I am right. And yet how I enjoyed every moment of his wrongness.” 27 Peter Jackson offered a more positive assessment of its innovative qualities:
    What a rib-tickling, refreshing
Twelfth Night
Peter Hall has conjured up … a production that is smooth and gay and brimming with new ways to play old tricks. Dorothy Tutin’s golden Viola is wonderfully boyish, breathless and bewildered and always completely audible. She is alive, and to be alive in a cast like this means working double overtime. To force Olivia to play for laughs while surrounded on all sides by comedians with far better lines does not give the actress a fighting chance, but Geraldine McEwan, with her piping voice and plaintive little gestures, draws such sympathy from the audience that the approach is almost justified. 28
    Designed by the painter Lila de Nobili and set in the Caroline court pre–civil war, the production was described by the critic Robert Speaight as “a rich symphony in russet.” 29 It was revived two years later for the Royal Shakespeare Company with a substantially revised cast (discussed in detail below, along with other RSC productions).
    One of the most successful non-RSC productions of the late twentieth century was at Stratford, Ontario, in 1975, directed by David Jones, with Kathleen Widdoes as Viola and Brian Bedford as a puritanical Malvolio. For his 1980 production at the Circle Repertory Theatre, New York, David Mamet allowed the actors to choose their own costumes in accordance with their conception of their character. This resulted in a medley of costumes which divided critics, many of whom thought it an “irresponsible gimmick,” while others argued that it revealed