Twelfth Night: RSC at the Barbican
Sometimes a director tries too hard to bring a novel or unusual interpretation to Shakespeare's work, producing a confused and ultimately unsatisfactory production. This unfortunately is the case with Prasanna Puwanarajah's version of Twelfth Night for the Royal Shakespeare Company, recently transferred to the Barbican from Stratford.
There is much to like about this production. The acting was universally good and used Shakespeare's words for the most part, only annotated with the occasional modernism, and the delivery of the lines made the story very easy to understand. Music is intrinsic to this play and the musical score produced by Matt Maltese was excellent. The costumes were eclectic, reflecting a modern era with one or two extraordinary exceptions such as Feste's initial costume,...