Theatre: Boy crazy

TWELFTH NIGHT THE WATERMILL NEWBURY

ON THE rare occasions that an all-male production of one of Shakespeare's comedy's is mounted these days, I'm always struck by how the plays make even greater sense, cast as the author originally intended. As Declan Donnellan proved in his consummate Cheek by Jowl As You Like It, the comic- erotic tension and sexual equivocality in the mock-wooing scenes between Orlando and the disguised Rosalind are exquisitely itemed if both performers are male. Rosalind is a woman pretending to be "Ganymede" who is pretending to be Rosalind: you might have thought it would cause a kind of chronic mental squinting in the audience to remove anything but the impersonated "essence" of femaleness from this equation. In fact, it makes you feel you are looking into the endlessly ambiguous heart of the play.

Similar frissons are induced now by Edward Hall's exhilarating new all- male account of Twelfth Night in the idyllic setting of The Watermill at Newbury. The cast are togged-out in dishevelled dinner jackets, and at the start a huge chandelier, radiating white party streamers over the theatre's wraparound galleries, is hoisted from the central acting area which is littered with the debris of some debauched rout.

The atmosphere is heady and riskily out-of-control: we seem to be watching the play as performed by an Oxbridge dining club. When not in character, the actors don white half-masks and form a mobile, ominously attentive chorus. It's an excellent framing device, re-evoking the licentious holiday spirit of the Twelfth Night celebrations in Shakespeare's times, and mirroring the topsy-turvy madness in Illyria.

The production is richly alive to the play's romantic mystery and its penetrating farce, with a staging of the famous eavesdropping scene that is delightfully scaled to The Watermill's intimate dimensions. Instead of their racing round and hiding behind box-trees, the same effect is produced in reverse by having the tricksters lob miniature shrubs at each other behind the back of Richard Clothier's hilarious Malvolio.

Above all, with a beautifully poignant performance from James Tucker as Viola, the production highlights the tremors of bisexuality in this comedy where the hero falls in love with a heroine he has never seen in female dress. A fey, sad elf-presence in his incongruous grey suit, Tucker's disguised Viola invites you to draw a parallel between her plight vis- a-vis Orsino (a charismatic Vincent Leigh) and that of a pre-Wolfenden young gay man, forced to live a lie.

The proceedings are patrolled by Tony Bell's violin-playing Feste, his watchful eyes abrim with a cordiality that feels rightly and creepily detached. As my nine-year-old assistant remarked, this Feste is only a clown because he is paid to be: the rest of them are clowns whether they like it or not. Strongly recommended.

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