The Stage

Twelfth Night

Published Friday 6 January 2012 at 11:53 by Lauren Paxman

This is the kind of Shakespeare production that would have English teachers burning their season tickets to The Globe - if such a thing existed. The pure inventiveness and imagination of faction theatre’s Twelfth Night would make the play a delight to teach to anyone who had seen it.

Gareth Fordred (Malvolio) in Twelfth Night at New Diorama Theatre, London Photo: Tristram Kenton

With a completely bare stage - and under Mark Leipacher’s inspired direction - the energetic, and utterly endearing, cast transport the audience from scene to scene quicker than you can say: “If music be the…”

Performers are introduced with a singalong that would not look out of place in the Coen brothers’ O’ Brother, Where Art Though?. The shipwreck that leaves Viola and Sebastian separately stranded in Illyria is given heart-wrenching physical energy. And a chapel scene is simply represented by the characters making signs of the cross.

Gareth Fordred’s Mavolio in general - and his asylum incarceration in particular - is a standout performance. But he is well supported by an accomplished cast.

All that and a sexy sauna scene that got the female A-level students in the audience all hot and bothered… With faction’s Mary Stuart and Miss Julie being performed in rep, the pressure is on for those shows to match this one.