1970 John Sichel Production

This adaptation, directed by John Sichel for British television, starred Alec Guinness as Malvolio; Tommy Steele as Feste; Ralph Richardson as Sir Toby Belch; Joan Plowright as both Viola and Sebastian; Gary Raymond as Orsino; Adrienne Corri as Olivia; John Moffatt as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Sheila Reid as Maria; and Riggs O’Hara as Fabian.

Oddly, little seems to have been written about this production despite its cast of prominent actors. It is not mentioned, for instance, in the valuable 1988 critical anthology edited by J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen titled Shakespeare on Television.

Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare, thought that Plowright’s Viola distances herself from and above the other characters; found this Feste superficial (253); called Richardson and Guinness too “reserved”; did praise John Moffatt as Aguecheek; but in general considered this production “staid” (254).

1980 BBC Shakespeare Production

Directed by John Gorrie, this adaptation featured Alec McCowen as Malvolio; Robert Hardy as Sir Toby Belch; Felicity Kendal as Viola; Annette Crosbie as Maria; Sinéad Cusack as Olivia; Trevor Peacock as Feste; Clive Arrindell as Orsino; Ronnie Stevens as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Robert Lindsay as Fabian; Maurice Roëves as Antonio; and Michael Thomas as Sebastian.

Henry Fenwick, in his essay on “The Production” (18–26) for the booklet the BBC published to accompany the first broadcast of this play, reported that director John Gorrie wanted to set the play at around the time of the English Civil Wars, with Malvolio as a kind of Puritan and with the other characters more obviously obsessed with love (18). Gorrie did not want the clothes to seem too fancy or highly colorful; he wanted them to seem credible as clothes, and Alun Hughes, the costume designer, tried for generally subdued tones with a gradual brightening, suggesting the kinds of clothes worn during the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, with sets (created by Don Taylor) appropriate to those reigns as well, mimicking country houses of that period (19), and a strong sense of domestic business taking place and generally informal relations and a strong emphasis on connections between the inside and outside of the house (20). The decision to set the play in the Caroline period affected the music (composed by Joseph Horovitz) in this especially musical play. Horovitz argued that Shakespeare used music deliberately and strategically, and Horovitz himself tried to keep his own music subtle rather than overbearing (20–23). Gorrie emphasized the importance of finding the right actors for the roles; he was pleased to cast Robert Hardy as Toby; Hardy saw resemblances between Toby and Falstaff, while Gorrie imagined Maria as a gentlewoman rather than a poor rural person (24). Similarly, he thought Andrew should be a believable suitor, not a complete fool (24–25). Likewise, Malvolio is portrayed in ways intended to make him believable, not a total idiot. Alec McCowen, playing Malvolio, saw the topic of chance, right from the start, as one of the play’s main themes. Felicity Kendal, playing Viola, found the role challenging, particularly in trying to find the right balance between softness and hardness in playing the character. Fenwick also stressed the different roles Feste plays within the work as an especially unpredictable character (25–26). Many people involved in the production, while missing input and reactions from an actual audience, thought that some scenes worked better on television than in the theater and vice versa. They thought subdued episodes worked best on television, and, because this play is so low-key, they believed it arguably works effectively on the small screen (26).

J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their helpful 1988 critical anthology titled Shakespeare on Television, quoted from a number of the earliest reviews, citing a writer for the New York Times as calling this production “not dazzlingly brilliant… solid … admirable. … Many of the performances are masterful … some … inadequate. … Clive Arrindell [Orsino] looks pretty but is naggingly insubstantial… Alec McCowen [Malvolio] remains a stranger among the other characters. … in the end, it remains a failed curiosity.” A reviewer for an academic journal found it “[c]heerful” and “vigorous” and said it provided a clear sense of the characters’ places in the social hierarchy, while a critic for the Los Angeles Times termed it a “spirited, joyful romp.” In the Chicago Tribune, a critic suggested that television restricted this production’s chances to succeed because it tended more toward telling than showing. Although he called the subplot “a complete dud” because its humor was too rapid-fire to be easily understood, he thought the slower-spoken main plot was more successful since the language could be savored. Meanwhile, another academic reviewer called the production “modest but very satisfying,” with a “wonderfully restrained and intelligent” Malvolio, a Falstaffian Sir Toby, and sets that suggested both “rural charm” and “domestic reality” (257).

In a generally enthusiastic review for the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter Virginia Carr wrote that this production succeeded better than many plays from the first season and inspired hope for later productions as well. She called this version “hearty,” “delightful,” and “polished”; said it “conveys the best qualities of ‘festive’ comedy”; asserted that its “actors relish their parts and play them sensitively, even to the smallest roles”; and particularly admired Alec McCowen’s “brilliant performance” as Malvolio, saying his “effeminate sneers and gestures capture Puritan superciliousness, excessive self-regard and vain ambition.” She considered “this Malvolio … so deliciously obnoxious that we never take him seriously,” so that “nothing mars the finale’s festive tone.” Listing each performer in turn and finding good things to say about them all, she wrote that as “Orsino, Clive Arrindell exudes a masculine strength which compensates for the melancholy lover’s whimpering wordiness; for once it does not seem strange that Viola should love her master so desperately.” She liked this Olivia’s “confident and assertive personality” and found this Feste “startling,” writing that as “the household pet, Trevor Peacock is not the usual tense thoroughbred. Instead he seems more like a lumbering and loveable mutt,” adding that “Peacock’s yeoman physique makes Feste manly and substantial. … There is nothing of Ariel in this Fool,” and “Peacock never lets the Fool be alienated or melancholy.” She considered his final song “a recapitulation of the play rather than a comment on the human condition” and noted how he alluded to various characters as he sang. Carr noted that “Gorrie’s conception of the play may strike some as superficial, for the subtext’s darker elements are not emphasized. But they are there.” Her final thoughts involved the difficulty of a female playing a male on television, with its revealing closeups (5).

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (254–56), Peter Cochran admired this production’s sets, lighting, and costumes as well as Clive Arrindell’s confident, even arrogant Orsino. Praising this version’s Viola and Olivia but not its Feste (254), finding some of the jokes funny but some subtleties absent (255), Cochran called this adaptation “an excellent Twelfth Night if you want a relaxed, expensive, charming version” (256).

1988 Kenneth Branagh/Paul Kafno Production

This adaptation, based on a stage version directed by Kenneth Branagh but directed for television by Paul Kafno, featured Christopher Ravenscroft as Orsino; Caroline Langrishe as Olivia; James Saxon as Sir Toby Belch; James Simmons as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Frances Barber as Viola/Cesario; Christopher Hollis as Sebastian/Curio; Richard Briers as Malvolio; Julian Gartside as Valentine; Shaun Prendergast as Fabian; Abigail McKern as Maria; Tim Barker as the Sea Captain/Antonio; and Anton Lesser as Feste.

Discussing this version in his 1992 book Shakespearean Performance as Interpretation, Herbert Coursen, admiring Paul Kafno’s direction but calling this Viola too quiet, noted that almost the whole play was filmed; reported that the twins are, troublingly, never shown together; found Sebastian perhaps “prettier” than Viola; and suggested that the identical twin convention can work in the theater but not on television. Describing the camera placement and set while also mocking “the director’s pusillanimity in failing to reach for real surrealism,” Coursen nonetheless admired the acting; commented on the wintry setting; observed the way illustrated mountains were used to try to add depth to the horizon; and praised this Olivia as “luminous in a way television seldom permits.” Coursen thought that in the finale Malvolio “feels more pain than anger,” saying that “Briers has been broken” and that his “response to his own mistreatment obliterates any sense of ‘festive comedy.’” According to Coursen, “the festive encoding is further smudged by Anton Lesser’s Feste,” a “Victorian vagabond, [sometimes tearfully] yearning to be incorporate with the world he satirizes” in a production that Coursen ultimately recommended (215–16).

Paul Edmonson, in his 2005 handbook on the play (59–61), noted that all the action occurs outdoors (59); observed that the production emphasizes “winter festivity” in a nineteenth-century setting (60); and commented on its “full text” and “fine voice[s],” saying that “many fine balances of mood, characterization, and poetic diction make it highly worthwhile” (67).

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (256–58), Peter Cochran praised this production’s opening emphasis on Viola; found Belch and Aguecheek unimpressive but admired this Feste (256); and initially called this Malvolio off-putting to other characters and to the audience alike but later called him “hilarious” (257). Cochran found dark implications in Malvolio’s response to his punishment (258).

1996 Trevor Nunn Production

This major film, directed by Trevor Nunn, starred Imogen Stubbs as Viola; Toby Stephens as Orsino; Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia; Steven Mackintosh as Sebastian; Imelda Staunton as Maria; Mel Smith as Sir Toby Belch; Richard E. Grant as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Nigel Hawthorne as Malvolio; Ben Kingsley as Feste; Peter Gunn as Fabian; and Nicholas Farrell as Antonio.

Herbert Coursen, in his 1999 book Shakespeare: The Two Traditions, called Nunn’s Twelfth Night “one of the more straightforward translations of a Shakespeare script to film” (199), saying it deals successfully with the problem of presenting identical twins (200) on film and adding that on television Twelfth Night has “never succeeded” in dealing with this issue (201). Noting problems in almost any production of the crowded ending (204), Coursen admired this production for keeping “more of the language of Twelfth Night than do most Shakespeare films” and for its efforts to “make the language filmic, rather than to create visual equivalents for the language” (205). He thought that “[p]erhaps the best scene in the film is that in which Malvolio is tricked into believing that Olivia is in love with him” (213), but in general seemed impressed with Nunn’s production overall.

Kenneth Rothwell, in his 1999 overview of a century of Shakespeare on film, briefly called the Nunn adaptation “by far the best screen treatment since the John Sichel 1970 British television version” but wrote that “in its world-weariness and rather fashionable despair it ironically replicates the fin-de-siecle mood of the late nineteenth century” (239). After describing the film and the performances, he concluded that “[i]n Twelfth Night Shakespeare created a verbal structure that probes the sadness and sweetness in the mystery of life, and Nunn has gracefully and wittily put that daunting challenge into moving pictures” (240).

Assessing the film in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare in the Movies, Douglas Brode praised the “gorgeous array of fall colors as well as an overpowering melancholia conveyed by perpetually gray skies,” finding this look “striking” but adding that “whether it’s what Shakespeare had in mind for his festive play is debatable.” He considered the play’s first third “slow-going”; found the subplot less funny than the main story; considered Nigel Hawthorne a Malvolio who seems so sympathetic that the mistreatment of him seems distressing; and commented that at the end we “feel sorry for a sad, decent man with no place to go.” He thought Ben Kingsley’s Feste less festive than his name suggests, describing him instead as a “deeply disturbed malcontent” who “spits … out … curses” and “makes the film bleaker than it ought to be.” On the other hand, he termed Helena Bonham Carter “a marvelous Olivia—an intelligent, deep person rather than the silly, distracted woman she is often depicted as,” so that “when she goes head over heels crazy with love, the effect is all the funnier.” Admiring “Nunn’s decision to underplay rather than overdo gender bending,” he nonetheless ultimately felt that “this film comes across as a Kenneth Branagh movie without the Branagh magic”—a film more likely to appeal as “art-house cinema” rather than as a “movie-movie.” He did, however, think that there is still “much that is charming here, particularly Imogen Stubbs as the disguised Viola” as well as the “vivid” locations (97–98).

Also published in 2000, Daniel Rosenthal, in Shakespeare on Screen (166–67), called this film “consistently intelligent, attractive and well-spoken, but only fitfully entertaining” but adding that the “Orsino/Cesario strand of the story comes alive much more effectively than on stage, with Nunn chopping up Shakespeare’s scenes to keep the pair’s relationship more consistently in view, and the excellent Imogen Stubbs (Nunn’s wife) making Viola’s cross-dressing both tense and amusing.” Nonetheless Rosenthal thought that “all the romantic and sexual confusions of Shakespeare’s most gender-conscious play accumulate at a disappointingly even pace … Nor is there much zip” to this production’s Andrew Aguecheek, so that “the cast raise smiles rather than laughter, and the film comes alive only in the last half-hour” (166–67).

Discussing the Nunn version in his 2002 book Shakespeare in the Cinema (150–56), Stephen Buhler wrote that the film “opens on a somber note and sustains it remarkably,” partly due to cuts of optimistic lines and partly due to other choices, including an “enigmatic and melancholy Feste” and a Victorian setting that seems appropriate for Olivia’s insistent grief. Buhler thought Nunn made Orsino less self-centered than in other productions; called this version “lovely to behold” thanks to its setting, photography, costumes, and décor; admired its appropriate music; and said all the main actors “are gifted comic performers, provoking genuine laughter throughout.” But he considered the “overall mood … bittersweet,” with a “tinge of final unhappiness for many of the leading characters” (155).

In an essay from 2002 titled “‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’ A Problematic (Re)Interpretation of Maria in Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night,” Kelli Marshall wrote that “Imelda Staunton’s uncharacteristic portrayal of Maria in Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night works against the plausibility of the narrative’s subplot, largely because Staunton’s onscreen depiction of a timid, melancholy spinster contradicts Maria’s commanding (and expected) role as the initiator of the Malvolio scheme. In addition, some of the camerawork and editing choices (both filmic and textual) around Staunton’s scenes reinforce this inconsistency, as both tend to distance her significantly from her conspiring cohorts” (217). According to Marshall, “Without doubt, creative liberties must and should be taken when one adapts a play (or any other form of literature for that matter) to screen, but when such license causes the audience to question the characters’ purposes or the believability and flow of the narrative itself, one might need to reconsider his/her interpretation” (222).

Also publishing in 2002, Laurie Osborne, in an essay titled “Cutting Up Characters: The Erotic Politics of Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night,” reported many contrasting reviews of the film (90). After a detailed discussion of how this adaptation and other Shakespeare films are edited in ways that create and establish characters, Osborne concluded that “Nunn’s Twelfth Night reveals our twentieth-century investment in character as a complex weave of gender identity and erotic alliance. The ‘depth’ of Viola’s character proves inextricably linked to the depth of her love, which can only be shown through her ongoing relationship with Orsino” (106).

In yet another essay from 2002, Philippa Sheppard, discussing “Inter-cutting in Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night,” wrote that “in act two, scenes three and four … Nunn, through skillful textual editing and inter-cutting, conveys Shakespearean richness of theme and character in a bare fraction of the dialogue.” She observed that “Nunn cuts between two chief locales: Lady Olivia’s kitchen, in which Feste sings ‘O Mistress Mine’ to Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and, in a significant inclusion Maria and Duke Orsino’s smoking room, in which Cesario and Orsino are engaged in a game of cards. He also,” Sheppard continued, “makes quick cutaways to Malvolio’s and Olivia’s bedchambers. Feste’s song provides a connecting tissue, as it is played on the piano in Orsino’s smoking room, while Feste’s voice from the kitchen floats up in voice-over to Olivia and Malvolio in their respective bedrooms” (179). Sheppard concluded that in “this sequence then, the audience is presented two seemingly contradictory ideas on love, gender, and identity at the same time. From Orsino’s words, and Feste’s song, and through Maria and Toby’s silent exchange of looks, we learn that men and women think differently about love, but from Orsino and Olivia’s love for Cesario/Viola, we learn that it is not gender that is critical in love, but identity” (186).

In his 2003 book Shakespeare at the Cineplex (79–90), Samuel Crowl admired the efficiency with which Nunn implied so many themes and tones in the movie’s opening minutes (81). Praising the film’s symmetrical structure so that it begins and ends with the same song; commending Nunn’s use of cross-cutting and “counterpoint”; noting the film’s diverse emphasis on the theme of exile (84); and commenting on its pervasive “autumnal atmosphere,” Crowl wrote that “Feste’s sad final song casts a melancholy shadow back over the entire film. Nunn’s house of love, which has been built on gender inclusiveness, seems oddly barren when it comes to imagining a similar generosity about class: fools, friends, uncles, maids—as well as stewards—are not entreated to a peace in a world where, evidently for most, the rain does rain every day” (85). According to Crowl, “Nunn gets so much of the upstairs romance so right that I was disappointed that the downstairs humor did not spark his filmic imagination in a similar fashion.” He wrote that “the Malvolio comedy fails to cohere,” partly because “Hawthorne’s Malvolio is too nice, and Mel Smith’s Sir Toby too boorish and banal, to give the proper tension to their clash.” He regretted that Toby was less likable than he might have been and thought this Maria was too sad (88), but he did praise “Nunn, Stubbs, Carter, Stephens, and Kingsley” for making “the gender confusions of the romance plot crackle with suspense and humor” despite his final view that “the more obvious comic tension the play creates between Sir Toby and Malvolio fizzles” and that the film ends on generally sad notes for many of its subsidiary characters (89).

Michael Anderegg, in his 2004 book Cinematic Shakespeare (141–42), compared Nunn’s film to Michael Hoffman’s movie version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an example of films that “exhibit some of the drawbacks to a ‘realistic’ approach to Shakespearean comedy. Neither film has anything to match the visceral pleasures of [Oliver] Parker’s Othello and [Richard] Loncraine’s Richard III at their best. Nunn, a brilliant stage director, signally fails to breathe life into one of Shakespeare’s richest and most carefully designed plays,” partly because of his “highly conventional desire to be cinematic” and the fact that “the cinema he produces is far too conventional” and “naturalistic,” so that it makes “little impact” and has “almost no comic life” (142).

In his 2005 handbook on the play (61–63), Paul Edmondson called the Nunn effort “quickly paced” and “strongly cast,” with an “autumnal tone,” “muted colours,” “dark interiors,” and “ever-present melancholy.” He spoke of the “power of the ocean”; the film’s “background story”; its “fine detail”; and its “carefully detailed [relationships],” saying it “freely adapts and reimagines the text” (63).

Sanner Garofalo, in an essay from 2007 titled “Enough of Excess: Portrayals of Twelfth Night’s Maria” argued that “Nunn and [Danny] Campbell [director of a recent stage production] clearly cannot accept a woman who mediates the hierarchal binaries. They change her characterization to force her to conform. Shakespeare, however, allows her to oscillate in [a] gray area. She possesses both masculine and feminine traits. Yet all three versions of the play leave Maria in the same position, marrying Toby.” According to Garofalo, “In watching the film and play production, the problem with this resolution is obvious: Nunn makes her pathetic in her dependence upon Toby; the audience feels sorry for her with such a husband. Campbell, on the other hand, basically ignores the relationship until the final announcement, making the marriage unbelievable. Nevertheless,” Garofalo concluded, “no matter how Twelfth Night is directed, the importance lies in the fact that this marriage does occur. Within the context of patriarchy, a woman must conform to the will of men, and marriage ensures that this happens” (125–26).

Writing in his 2008 book Shakespeare on Film: A Norton Guide (90–91, 133–36, 165–66, 186–87), Samuel Crowl said that Nunn’s film “draws on popular culture, partly because of Nunn’s prior involvement with staged musicals” (90); noted its emphasis on British actors (90); observed that it treats Feste as a narrator (90–91); discussed its use of cross-cuts (91); discussed the nature of Feste’s role (133–34); and reported the stress on his songs. He commented on the ways Orsino’s court is depicted, and the ways the text is adapted and suggested that the teachings of the scholar F. R. Leavis, with his emphasis on close reading, may have influenced Nunn, who was one of Leavis’s students (135).

In an essay from 2008 titled “Nunn’s Sweet Transvestite: Desiring Viola in Twelfth Night,” Catherine Thomas wrote that “Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night is … a playful but suggestive mix of its historical predecessors. It borrows Victorian representations of a gentler, ‘feminine’ Olivia and emphasizes Viola’s complex appropriation of male dress and behavior. Yet she plays the man very well and does not hedge in her wooing forwardness to both Olivia and Orsino. Her words and actions carefully present her transgressions of gender and class as a cross-dresser. Twelfth Night’s indebtedness to early modern transvestism therefore seems, largely, to be an open acknowledgment of the fluidity of desire and the provocative nature of theatricality” (318).

Peter Cochran, commenting on the Nunn production in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (258–60), noted cuts and additions to the text (258); described various settings and characters (258–59); thought this Feste and this Malvolio detest one another (259); and finally called this version’s realism “outstanding” (260).

Philippa Sheppard, in her 2017 book Devouring Time (242ff, 303–19), wrote that an “inserted sequence” in Nunn’s film “lessens the ambiguity of Orsino’s attraction to Cesario/Viola, … [and] that Orsino somehow sensed Viola’s femininity all along, despite her disguise” (245). She thought that in various ways Nunn had “improved on Shakespeare’s original,” making various “text cuts and changes, especially through intercutting (alternating shots from two or more sequences to suggest parallel action)” that make the play more “accessible to a larger audience by truly translating it to the new medium” (303). Mentioning intercutting once again, she thought it contributes to the film’s success in several ways: “one, it fulfills a structural function in suggesting that two or more scenes are occurring simultaneously; two, it thus adds to the suspense and pacing of the film; three, it creates dramatic irony by giving the audience more knowledge than any of the characters; and four, it creates parallelism, allowing the intercut scenes to comment on one another,” with Sheppard being especially interested in the last-mentioned effect (304). She then provided a very detailed plot summary and discussion of particular scenes; noted the wistfulness of the film’s music (315); and asserted that “Nunn’s Twelfth Night is evidence that it is possible to make Shakespeare’s plays truly filmic without losing what is Shakespearean about them. Nunn’s use of intercutting is a good example in cinema history of interference with Shakespeare’s text that renders the play more filmic and yet does not take away from the meaning of the text but rather enhances it” (319).

1998 Nicholas Hytner Production

This adaptation, directed by Nicholas Hytner and broadcast live on American television from New York’s Lincoln Center, starred Philip Bosco as Malvolio; Amy Hill as Maria; Helen Hunt as Viola; David Patrick Kelly as Feste; Julio Monge as Antonio; Brian Murray as Sir Toby Belch; Paul Rudd as Orsino; Kyra Sedgwick as Olivia; Rick Stear as Sebastian; and Max Wright as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Commenting on this production in his 2002 book Shakespeare in Space (57–59), Herbert Coursen asserted that “Paul Rudd’s Orsino offers little with which Helen Hunt’s Viola can fall in love. He is a layabout who can paralyze his dukedom simply because he is the duke. Philip Bosco’s Malvolio has sunk so far into the depths of his pompousness that his sudden lust is not credible.” Meanwhile, “Kyra Sedgwick as Olivia is giddy, even before she meets Cesario, and splashes past whatever signals might reside in her prose or verse. Hunt’s squinting and anxious Viola struggles with her emphasis. That difficulty might have been a subtext for her uneasy pose as a young man, but here it seems just an actor’s inexperience.” He did find a “few good moments” but for the most part seemed to consider this adaptation a waste of time, writing that “David Patrick Kelly’s Feste is apparently an out-of-work rock singer” but also suggesting that the actors playing “Toby and Andrew, Brian Murray and Max Wright, do some good work as a comic twosome—and, I am told, were good on the Beaumont stage,” where this production originated (58). Nonetheless, he felt that they overacted on television (59).

In an essay from 2024 titled “The 1998 Live Production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center: A Survey of Reviews,” Eric Sterling discussed the ways numerous critics responded to Hytner’s production. Sterling reports that “published reviews of the play were largely uneven” and that “even critics who admired the show usually found something to dislike, especially in the major performances, although performances in the comic subplot were widely admired and practically every reviewer praised the production’s set.” Sterling, nonetheless, contended that “the mere fact that the play was filmed and broadcast in front of a ‘live’ audience makes Hytner’s production a significant event in the history of Shakespeare on film” (192), especially at a time when live theatrical broadcasts were not common.

The Globe Production is also discussed in another 2024 essay, this one by Robert Evans—“Playing Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for Laughs in Four Major ‘Live’ Productions”—in which he reported on how two key scenes from the play were greeted by audiences in four different venues. In particular, he examined when, why, and how audiences responded to laughter in the varied stagings of these scenes. He concluded that because Shakespeare’s plays were created not only to be read but especially to be staged, reading his comedies “in conjunction with an essay such as this one can remind readers of how variously the dramas can be imagined by particular directors, how differently they can be brought to life by specific actors, and how distinctly they can provoke responses from specific audiences in specific performance spaces” (267).

2003 Tim Supple Production

Directed by Tim Supple, this adaptation featured Parminder Nagra as Viola; Ronny Jhutti as Sebastian; Chiwetel Ejiofor as Orsino; Burt Caesar as Valentine; Andrew Kazamia as Antonio; Claire Price as Olivia; Maureen Beattie as Maria; David Troughton as Toby Belch; Richard Bremmer as Andrew Aguecheek; Zubin Varla as Feste; Vincenzo Nicoli as Fabian; and Michael Maloney as Malvolio.

Paul Edmondson, in his 2005 handbook on the play (63–66), called this production “uncompromisingly modern and multicultural”; admired its “clever interpretive choices”; noted its “strongly Indian casting”; wrote that “Orsino’s palace is abstract in its location”; and thought that “Viola appears too feminine throughout.” He wrote that Malvolio is “portrayed with great tenderness and hardly any absurdity” (65); that Supple “freely rearranges the text”; that the production provides a “great sense of mystery and visual richness”; and that it works as “a finely balanced romantic comedy with an overarching sense of a grittier, harsher-edged reality” (66).

In an end-of-the-book abstract from 2008 describing her essay titled “Colour-consciousness in Tim Supple’s Twelfth Night (2003),” Florence Cabaret wrote that she wanted “to show how Tim Supple’s 2003 adaptation of Twelfth Night, Or What Will … helps us read Shakespeare’s text in a more contemporary perspective (having to do with the issue of immigration)” while it also “revives Renaissance practices (as far as the colours of actors were concerned)” and helps highlight “various plays on nuances that are supported by metaphors referring to colours.” She argued that television “sets hackneyed phrases about bodies and skin colours in a visual context” and explored “the original meaning of such linguistic clichés.” She thought that Supple’s production emphasized “marginal bodies (socially and ethnically speaking) that appear to threaten the order of the centre of attraction (Olivia’s house).”

In another essay from 2008 titled “‘This Uncivil and Unjust Extent Against Thy Peace’: Tim Supple’s Twelfth Night, or What Violence Will,” Alfredo Michel Modenessi, in a detailed discussion of the origins and features of this production, offered almost a scene-by-scene account while mentioning, for example, that Supple employed “a multi-ethnic cast” but “also carefully grouped his actors so that this wouldn’t be a case of ‘colour-blind casting.’” Thus, “Olivia’s household is British while Orsino’s is African and the twins are Indian.” According to Modenessi, “[s]ince multiculturalism entails tension as much as integration, the limitations on the Duke’s passage into Olivia’s house or heart are made ever more significant in this ‘colour-aware’ scenario, no less because the one person (and then her twin) for whom Olivia’s doors do open is not only Orsino’s ‘man’ but, paradoxically, the more recognizably alien in the mix” (95).

In her 2017 book Devouring Time (235–37, 245–47), Philippa Sheppard credited Supple with creating a backstory and providing a multicultural emphasis and discussed Viola’s use of masculine disguise (245–47).

2012 Shakespeare’s Globe Production

Directed by Tim Carroll for television, this all-male adaptation starred Samuel Barnett as Sebastian; Liam Brennan as Orsino; Paul Chahidi as Maria; Johnny Flynn as Viola; Stephen Fry as Malvolio; James Garnon as Fabian; Peter Hamilton Dyer as Feste; Colin Hurley as Sir Toby Belch; Roger Lloyd Pack as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Mark Rylance as Olivia; and Joseph Timms as Sebastian.

In an essay from 2024 titled “The 2002 and 2012 All-Male Twelfth Night Productions at the Open-Air Globe: Their Critical Reception,” Robert Evans discussed a production that originated in 2002 and in London’s Globe Theatre and was then revived at the same theater in 2012. It then moved to a major “West End” theater before moving again across the Atlantic for a major staging on Broadway in New York. This production, featuring an all-male cast led by Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry, was enormously popular and praised wherever it was performed. It is widely regarded as one of the best and most successful stagings of Twelfth Night ever mounted, and the reviews Evans surveys support that conclusion. They tended to range from enthusiastic to highly enthusiastic both in London and in New York, and, in fact, in the United States the play was quickly nominated for various important Tony awards and won them in diverse categories. Evans surveyed reviews of the staging at the Globe (which fortunately was filmed) and of the staging in New York (bits and pieces of which can be seen on YouTube, where audience members have posted a few illicit clips and where some clips from the Tony Awards show have also been posted).

Bibliography