Twelfth Night, Or What You Will

Does Sydney really need more Shakespeare on its theatre mainstages? Probably not. Is Belvoir's production of Twelfth Night an enjoyable romp nonetheless? Yes.

There's no attempt here to contemporise or really update the play. We're not given a reason why the pomp and madness of Twelfth Night might be relevant to a 21st century audience. We're not made to feel the seriousness, the melancholy. Instead it seems that director Eamon Flack has set out to entertain, casting some of the best in the business in this gender-bending story of love and trickery, all set against an arresting, brightly coloured set from Michael Hankin.

Our main plot has Viola (Nikki Shiels), pretending to be Cesario as she grieves her brother Sebastian (Amber McMahon). Count Orsino (Damien Ryan) instructs her to woo Olivia on his behalf — but she ends up being too successful, Anita Hegh's Olivia falling over herself to get close to Cesario. Meanwhile Orsino too is drawn to the womanly Cesario.

Our subplot, and frankly the most engaging part of the play, has Olivia's uncle Sir Toby (John Howard), his friend Sir Andrew (Anthony Phelan), her maid Maria (Lucia Mastrantone), and our fool, Festo (Keith Robinson) playing a trick on Olivia's steward, Malvolio (Peter Carroll), convincing him that he is the object of Olivia's affections. Carroll plays this to a tee, the physicality of his performance deserving the uproarious laughter coming from the crowd. Returning to the stage after a long, continuing struggle with illness, Robinson turns in a wry performance as the fool, given both witty one-liners and an air of melancholy, plus a few modern updates. He speaks directly to the audience with a wink and a nod: "That was an Elizabethan land tax joke - not funny then, not funny now."

By the end all the narrative strands are neatly tied up, everyone is paired up, and the revelry is over.