![\"twelfthnightposter\"](\"http:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/twelfthnightposter.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
College plays serve many purposes. They train actors, illuminate drama to English students, develop friendships, and unite a College\u2019s past and future. \u2018Aha\u2019, I will say to myself when I see certain students from now on, \u2018There\u2019s Sir Toby Belch\u2019, or \u2018There\u2019s Sir Andrew Aguecheek\u2019. Years hence, if I see those people again, part of me will still be thinking this; remembering them, as young adults, playing those parts.<\/p>\n
Twelfth Night<\/em>, with its distrust of puritanism, is a good choice for the end of the academic year. Any shunning of cakes and ale which had been going on during the exam season is over.<\/p>\n Of course, the play also knows about the melancholy of passing time, the grief of thwarted love, and the selfishness of excess. It marks the last night of the holidays, whereas the College played it on the first nights of our own holidays. But the production dealt with this tension by knocking off the play\u2019s roughest edges.<\/p>\n Roughest of all edges lost was the taunting of Malvolio. It\u2019s a brave scene (if unrealistic; in a black hole one does<\/em> go mad after a few hours), which throws a spanner in the play\u2019s hedonistic works. But this was an eighteenth century production played in the eighteenth century home which is 19 Bedford Square. Shakespeare\u2019s most painful aspects were quietly dropped, leaving a happier, less morally-troubled play.<\/p>\n There was only one line of which I regretted the loss, because it is one of my favourite lines in all of Shakespeare.<\/p>\n It happens when Olivia, after a particularly robust rebuff from Cesario, says<\/p>\n \u2018Why, then, methinks \u2019tis time to smile again\u2019.<\/p>\n After many an anguished hour, many a tear-stained pillow, many a desparate resolution to jump in the Adriatic or the Thames or into an order of nuns – deep in the depths of her soul, at last, a tiny sigh of boredom is heard. Boredom with grief, boredom with tragedy. Comedies have the last laugh, and they have to get going sooner or later. It may as well be now. After all the stuttering of unrequited love, the iambic rhythm of life lived forwards reasserts itself:<\/p>\n \u2018Why, then, methinks \u2019tis time to smile again.\u2019<\/p>\n May this line come to us all, sooner rather than later, when we stand in need of it.<\/p>\n The acting of this production was generous and energetic; the\u00a0directing was intelligent and assured. The SCR and its furniture acquired another palimpsestic layer, as the\u00a0sofa used in last autumn’s production of Betrayal<\/em>\u00a0was transformed into Orsino’s couch. James\u2019s Orsino had in fact more than a touch of Robert about it, but Jess\u2019s Viola was no Emma \u2013 she was patient and faithful, brilliant and hopeful. Mike reprised his role in Oh, the Humanity<\/em>\u00a0as wryly detached observer, whereas Sir Toby and his \u2018friends\u2019 played with gleeful abandon. Mariella\u2019s grieving Olivia had awesome yet vulnerable dignity. Paul\u2019s Malvolio was likeable and dignified compared to most Malvolios I have seen, and I was glad of this. After all, we can\u2019t eat cakes all the time; our obesity is already a burden on the NHS. Our discarding of the conventions of mourning has now gone so far that we have perhaps lost some of the emotional protection which they afforded. The desire to have sex with one\u2019s female boss should surely raise no sniggers in the post-Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em> world.<\/p>\n The line \u2018Methinks I have sometimes no more wit than a Christian\u2019 had a particular resonance in our College, with its noted atheists; but it is, after all, only an idiocy on the part of Sir Andrew.<\/p>\n His \u2018Oh, had I but followed the arts\u2019 was, by contrast, in nice accord with my own ongoing gratitude to myself for having done precisely that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a short review of the New College of the Humanities student production of ‘Twelfth Night’ staged at the end of Trinity term 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[21,42,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions\/768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}