A miracle at the RSC: genuinely funny Shakespeare

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Most subsidised theatres hanker for political relevance. Even so, when the Royal Shakespeare Company planned its new production of Twelfth Night, they can hardly have expected that by Christmas 2024 we’d have Malvolio as prime minister. The curious thing is that, as portrayed by Samuel West, Shakespeare’s eternal killjoy cuts rather a sympathetic figure. He’s elegant in dress and carriage, with a shadow of a northern brogue to suggest that this is a man who has strived hard for his status and sees himself as upholding values that have a real, and higher, worth.

Against him stands Joplin Sibtain’s Toby Belch: bear-like in his George V whiskers and fur-lined coat. He’s a thoroughly aristocratic lord of misrule, and there’s something of Oliver Reed in his raddled courtesies and beefy self-assurance. Sibtain’s Sir Toby is poised permanently at the line where boozy joshing threatens to turn feral, and Maria (Danielle Henry) eggs him on; a little ball of crackling spite. One of the most impressive aspects of Prasanna Puwanarajah’s direction is that Malvolio’s eventual humiliation is latent, but no more, in the earlier revels. The bitter notes rise, linger, and are blown away in a puff of fantasy – or one of Feste’s lilting songs.

Puwanarajah doesn’t clobber you with it; there’s no lurch in tone, and no insistence upon whose side you’re supposed to take. Instead, there’s elegantly executed slapstick and a playful strain of absurdism, carried through into James Cotterill’s designs. A dangling light-pull has the power to turn out the sun. Feste (Michael Grady-Hall) has a banana protruding from his crotch, and a colossal organ (the musical sort) dominates the back of the set to justify the Christmassy chorales and Wurlitzer pratfalls of Lindsey Miller’s keyboard-dominated score.