After "Six Characters" . . . Twelfth Night

A less happier effort though just as satisfying was "Twelfth Night." Here Miss Marsh compresses five acts into two, with great use of folding flats, drapes, and a cyclorama. She tended to lay the emphasis on the comic rather than the romantic side of the play, and the theatre-starved Wellington audience loved it.

John Schlesinger, as Feste, excelled himself—he was the co-ordinating factor throughout the action and laid the lightheartedness or thick.

Basil Henson here was conscious of his voice. His opening lines spoken on a semi-darkened stage were rolled out with even more sonority than usual. He gave the effect of consciously speaking Shakespeare and not Orsino. Naturalness did not come to him so easily as In "Six Characters."

The most glaring mistake in the production was Wendy Gibb. Surely Olivia has been played with more subtlety than that which calls for hysterical exclamations and anguished stares at the gallery. She left the impression that she had difficulty in lowering her eyes to the normal level.

What made up the comic relief amply displaced any other faults. Frederick Bennett might have come straight from the VUC Football Club, and it was hard to recognise the impersonator of Sir Andrew Aguecheek as the same person in "Six Characters." Peter Howell is an actor of great adaptability.

Of the other, Marcia Hathaway seemed likely at any moment to break into a can-can, and Malvolio was much enjoyed in his nightshirt. The version of the "dark chamber adjoining" was ingenious. Brigid Lenihan came up to expectations and Geoffrey Taylor made a Leo Genn-type of sea captain.

Incidentally: the usually accepted sub-title of the play is "What You Will," and the action takes place in the courts of Orsio and Olivia, not as printed in the programme. Mistakes of this kind can be avoided.