Press Invite. Tickets gifted in exchange for honest review.
It’s no secret to regular readers or listeners that here at Overstudies we are huge fans of Shakespeare. Whether it’s adaptations of his own work or works directly inspired by his folio, we’ve travelled the globe to see them – so when we saw that Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre were staging their own production of Twelfth Night this summer season with a queer twist we knew that it was a must see show.
For those unfamiliar with the story of Twelfth Night, this Shakespeare comedy tells a tale of mistaken identities, grief, and love against the backdrop of the kingdom of Illyria. After a devastating shipwreck, Viola finds herself taking the identity of her (presumed dead) twin brother as a means of protection in the unfamiliar land she has found herself in. While hiding her identity she not only wins the heart of Olivia, the kingdom’s most desired bachelorette, but also finds herself falling for Duke Orsino. He, however, is trying to win the heart of the previously mentioned Olivia, which is where our love triangle becomes complicated. When Sebastian returns from the dead, chaos breaks out as the love triangle encounters a whole number of hectic encounters of mistaken identity.
This story has been adapted for both stage and screen on countless occasions, but Twelfth Night has a particularly strong connection to the Open Air Theatre space itself. A musical version of Twelfth Night transferred from the New Theatre (now the Noël Coward Theatre) to a makeshift venue in Regent’s Park in 1934, becoming one of the first productions to run there. It was so successful that it returned for a second year in 1935. The comedy has returned regularly to the Open Air Theatre since, creating a 90-year long relationship that has spanned across generations and creative teams.
It is evident that a great deal of care and attention has gone into this particular production of Twelfth Night, both because of the connection to the Open Air Theatre space but also because of the unapologetically queer nature of the production. Directed by Owen Horsley, this adaptation leans deeply into the queer elements of this play in both a romantic sense and in the sense of self-identification and gender. Shakespeare was known for his playfulness with self-expression and was heavily associated with ‘gender-bending’ and queer desires. It is therefore often easy to forget that this is only one interpretation of the text. It’s easy to argue that Twelfth Night is the play that explores this to the deepest level but it is often something that’s overlooked in ‘traditional’ stagings of the piece.
The choice to move characters away from being related by blood to the idea of a ‘chosen family’ whilst also gender-flipping a number of roles helps to cement the queerness of this production from the get go. We’re presented with a vague setting; a run-down but well-loved cafe is the only location we witness throughout, but when this is combined with timeless costume design (from Ryan Dawson Light) we can start to understand that there is a conscious choice to leave the location and setting of the play vague. This is not one story, but an amalgamation of different versions of the play told again and again as well as a blend of every queer story told on stage. It feels like the space has been created to welcome everyone.
Like with most Shakespeare productions, it is the words and performances that are the central focus of the show, and this adaptation is absolutely no exception. Not only does the vagueness of the set allow for any number of lived experiences to be projected onto the stage, it also allows the cast of talented actors to deliver strong character performances for some of Shakespeare’s most over the top roles. Stand out performances include Anna Francolini, who brings forth Olivia’s dramatic nature in a way that embodies diva camp that we would expect from the owner of a queer venue while managing to avoid straying into the realm of pastiche, and Evelyn Miller who demonstrates her experience with the piece through a vulnerable yet determined Viola.
An interesting directorial decision was made in the choice to portray Toby Belch as a seemingly gender non-conforming drag performer. Typically portrayed as a drunken embodiment of the chaos of Twelfth Night, I was initially concerned at the possible negative connotations of this character being portrayed as a drag queen due to the crude nature of his jokes and the negative implications these jokes can have around trans women and the wider drag community. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this decision was in fact a more positive depiction than initially expected. While in some plays a drag queen taking off her wig or flashing her legs to the audience may be seen as a cheap laugh, Toby Belch is instead presented as more of a gender non-conforming character throughout the rest of the play, wearing dresses and trousers with suspenders, sometimes without a wig but never without breast forms. For a play that leans into the idea of gender being a social construct, this felt like an appropriate addition that makes a nod to wider queer culture without straying into the offensive.
Other nods to queer culture come through the subtle choices in lighting design. A space like Open Air Theatre is often difficult to demonstrate creativity within lighting, given that for the first act the stage is completely in daylight and throughout the second act movement through dusk into night requires a specific skill set of achieving subtle lighting design that moves with the natural world. Aideen Malone has done a spectacular job at lighting this piece, with a breathtakingly subtle blue, purple and pink wash greeting the audience post-interval which leans into the concept of bisexual lighting – a trend that gained traction in the bisexual community in 2014. Given the ambiguous and fluid implications of sexuality throughout the piece and the wider queer connotations throughout, the choice to light the stage in this manner for the majority of the second act of the play felt like a subtle but clever nod to the queer community.
While there are many ways that the story of Twelfth Night can be interpreted, choosing to lean into the queerness of the story does make the production feel fresh and leaves the ‘straighter’ relationships feeling like a footnote in a production that is a love letter to the exploration of sexuality and identity. It is evident that this production has been created with a certain level of understanding of the text in mind to get the full experience. And, while that shouldn’t prevent those who have never seen a production of Twelfth Night before from going to watch, it does leave a potential question of how clear the queer elements of this show have been made within general promotion of the production. For fear of alienating one group of theatre goers, there is a risk of potentially missing out on a whole new audience that would relish to see their community represented on stage in such a way.
Twelfth Night runs at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until 8 June. Tickets are available from the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre Website: https://openairtheatre.com/
