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Twelfth Night’s first veil debate
SHAKESPEARE: TWELFTH NIGHT
Old Vic
CONTRARY to popular opinion, what became known as the ‘veil debate’ this summer did not begin with a slip of the tongue from cabinet minister Jack Straw.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night tackled the subject more than 400 years ago.
The gender swapping comedy was performed by an all-male cast to a buzzing Old Vic on Wednesday night.
Viola, dressed as a messenger-boy, goes to woo Olivia for his master Orsino and is confronted by a veiled face. She is lost for words.
But when the veil is removed Viola pours forth some of the most powerful lines ever written.
This early scene, sadly for the audience at the Spacey-dome, fell flat on its face. That beauty, in the all-male show, became the vision of a six-foot-four drag queen.
The frustrations of an all-male cast, which must have been shared by Shakespeare – not embraced as the Propeller company suggest – were patently evident. Men acting as women, it seems, can only do two imitations – either the feeble wimp or the camp drag queen variety.
Watching men perform as women in a production of Twelfth Night is rather like the Football Association deciding the FA Cup finalists should use a pigskin ball, in an attempt to restore traditional values to the modern game.
What is the point of the all-male cast? To see how Shakespeare would have done it in his day, of course. But would Shakespeare, who set his Roman plays in his present and whose work was forever bent on egalitarian horizons, have cast women as men, had he the choice? I doubt it.
Director Edward Hall has however created a quality production. Off-stage actors creep about the stage, looking in at every scene – it felt claustrophobic.
Malvolio’s shocking degradation and Feste’s affecting lullaby brutally sealed any sides split from the mistaken identity shenanigans.
But it may take more than this to lift the spirits of this 2007 season.
Until Feb 17
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