TWELFTH NIGHT, THE MARLOWE SOCIETY, THE ARTS THEATRE CAMBRIDGE
Someone once said that if you see a cluster of love-heart balloons on stage in the first act of a play, you can be sure one of them will be popped by the safety curtain when it descends for the interval. That was what happened last night, anyway, and how fitting – for The Arts Theatre is back with a bang after its elegant refurb! Following hot on the Cuban heels of Guys and Dolls comes this jaw-droppingly good Twelfth Night from Cambridge’s Marlowe Society. The Marlowe Arts Show is a prestigious annual collaboration between top student talent and industry professionals that dates back over a century. It has helped launch some famous names in the arts, including Dame Emma Thompson and Tom Hiddleston. The professional team of creatives for Twelfth Night is led by director Michael Oakley. In the untying of Shakespeare’s tangled tale of two twins separated by a shipwreck, each believing the other dead, a new generation of mesmerising stars emerges.
The play is brilliantly cast and exquisitely costumed. It would not be unwise to start with the Fool, Feste. Stella Williamson is wise enough to excel in the role, drawing on her experience in improv and sketch shows to provide some deft comedic touches. Nattily dressed (all charity shop chic), she sets the tone for the play with her understated performance, and wows us with her wonderful singing to boot. Sir Toby Belch (Theo Francis) wears a green wax jacket and brown corduroys. He has some Pringles at the ready, along with numerous hip-flasks secreted about his person, and his scenes with Sir Andrew Aguecheek are suitably riotous. The role of Aguecheek is entrusted to Toby Trusted (they/them) and the decision pays dividends: a prancing prankster, they revel in Belch’s antics, their long hair and thick fabric suit just the ticket. Other members of Olivia’s household are dressed like members of Logan Roy’s entourage in Succession, while Eddie Adams’s Malvolio is as stiffly formal and unsmiling as Tommy Lascelles from The Crown – until, of course, he reads the “epistle of love” left in his path by the mischievous Maria, played with zestiness by Elizabeth Peni Brooks (the delivery of her line about catching the trout “with tickling” is delightful). Lauren Akinluyi and Jacob Mellor are excellent as the stylishly dressed Olivia and Orsino, respectively. Mellor conveys the frustration of unrequited love, unable to relax for his masseuse, while Akinluyi is all a-quiver on meeting the count’s attractive emissary.
The red love-heart balloons are used cleverly throughout the play, never less so than when Antonio appears to see them as a good omen, emboldening him to travel to Illyria in search of Sebastian despite being a wanted man there: “That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.” The role is relatively small, but Max Parkhouse delivers a powerhouse performance, exploding with anger when the person he thinks is Sebastian professes not to know him. Confusion and chaos reign throughout the play, of course, and some of the most uproarious scenes are the ones showing the misleading and “abuse” of Malvolio. Eddie Adams goes the whole hog with his cross-garter look, undergoing a transformation that has to be seen to be believed. He mouths out the letters “M, O, A, I” from the love letter like a doddery pensioner attempting a Countdown conundrum. His excitement surges when he discovers the Post scriptum, and Belch & co. conceal themselves again with alacrity; the bursting balloon was a kind of ‘P.P.S.’ for this brilliant scene.
I walked out of Guys and Dolls whistling the tunes from it, and the same thing happened here – a testament to the musicality of this production. The creative team exploit the music in the play very well, thanks in large part to Williamson’s singing. A snazzy five-piece band, conducted with zippiness and precision by Gabriel Owens on keys, sits just above the action downstage, setting the mood superbly (with the drums and the violin featuring strongly). The words ‘what you will’ hang above the stage throughout, meanwhile, but they are not quite a ‘constant’: after the interval, the two ‘w’s go walkabout – two twins trying to get back where they belong…
Which brings me, at last, to the stars of the show (after they steal it back from Malvolio), H Sneyd as Viola and Enya Crowley as Sebastian. It is remarkable that these two actors are relative newcomers to the stage, as they both have an impressive ability to draw out the emotion that swirls within their characters. Sneyd excels in the “skipping” dialogue of their verbal jousting with Olivia, as Viola (in the guise of Cesario) is forced to go “off [their] text”. Crowley brings real presence to the role of Sebastian, showing believable affection for Antonio and then bliss on becoming the object of Olivia’s desire. Sneyd deals admirably with the task of showing Viola’s growing hope that her brother may have survived the shipwreck, pitching their performance just right, and the denouement is simply sensational.
The cast of Twelfth Night will “strive to please you every day” this week. Go and be beguiled!
