Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's Globe, London

Shakespeare's comedy of eros

Zounds and gadzooks, what a jolly Twelfth Night this is. The performances are different degrees of wonderful, but the honours go to Mark Rylance's Olivia and Paul Chahidi's Maria. Both in voluminous gowns, moving as if on casters, they glide through the play's scenes of mischief and bewilderment, leaving matters just a bit more chaotic than before.

When this Olivia falls for the duke's boy, she doesn't, as others have, rip off her weeds and dress like the Queen of the May. Her mourning black stays on, an emblem of all the propriety she can muster against the sudden passion that has her tongue-tied one minute, blurting out her feelings the next, and covered with embarrassment the third.

Her war between impulse and rigidity is summed up when she tells Malvolio to return a ring Cesario left behind – then struggles to pull it off her finger. The battle is lost when she stops the fight between Cesario and Sir Andrew Aguecheek with one of the brilliant bits of comic business in which Tim Carroll's production abounds – one that depends for its effect not only on the manoeuvre but on its daringly slow timing.

In line with the play's double deceptions (Viola/Cesario is a boy pretending to be a girl who pretends to be a boy), Chahidi seems to be an actress playing an old queen who plays an old girl ripe for a bit of fun – the actress, in this case, being Edith Evans. Like her mistress, Maria has a grave, deliberate manner that emphasises her moments of disruptive fancy, but she can be wistful too. Her face, when she realises that Cesario's compliments are not meant for her, becomes like that of a large mouse trying to disappear into its elaborate lace collar.

With their strange, bullet-shaped hats and spare-tire-like protuberances below the waist, Jenny Tiramani's Shakespearean costumes are a monument to authenticity, though adaptable to character. Albie Woodington's Sir Andrew, who scowls, chin on chest, to show how very fierce he is, swathes his manly torso in a kind of striped beer barrel atop bony white legs. Long before his timidity is exposed in the duel with Cesario, Sir Andrew is rumbled by the intrusion of Malvolio in furious-housemaster mode, on his midnight revels. Though carrying on like a demented rock star, and doing unpleasant things with a dead rabbit, he immediately collapses, stroking his furry, limp correlative with gestures of "nice bunny, nice bunny''.

The rabbits have been provided by Peter Hamilton Dyer's Feste, in cape and feathered hat a sort of gentle, wild creature on a visit. His quiet charm (he is very tender with the distressed Olivia) is a lovely foil to the carry-ons of the others, and his melancholy singing silences even Sir Andrew and his more drunken friend, Sir Toby, for a comically long time. Liam Brennan is not a weedy Orsino, sighing and sickening, but a robust, restless fellow, making his growing attraction to Cesario horrifying to him and hilarious to us.

The verse-speaking, however, can sound a bit prosy at times, and occasionally careless. The clank of a "bab-uh-ling'' or "dissemb-uh-ling'' reminds us that if Shakespeare had wanted an 11th syllable, he would have put it there himself.

To 28 September (020-7401 9919)