Twelfth Night, and upon request: pictures

I went to see the Shakespeare play TWELFTH NIGHT last night.

But, before I show pictures from that, here are ones from today.

Me, demonstrating what I looked like before clarse:




And a demonstration of what I look like after clarse:








Derek Jacobi played Malvolio. The highly-scrupled steward who is tricked into thinking that his mistress is in love with him when he receives a letter, supposedly from her, saying so.



Jacobi. Hardly need to say that he is one of the greats. He was knighted in both Danish and British, like Laurence Olivier. He's most known for his role in I. Claudius . He's also just a really nice guy. And he was in an episode of Doctor Who!

These are the men who, along with a maid, set Jacobi's Malvolio up.



They are the very funny characters (in essence, the fools). Tall dude: Guy Henry as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who, I will proudly relate, I happened to see a few months ago in person at the RADA and short dude Ron Cook (Sir Toby Belch). You might have recently seen him in Little Dorrit as the Marshalsea prison guard.




Above. Victoria Hamilton as Viola. She is shipwrecked. Thinks her brother is dead. Has no where to go. Decides to join Orsino's (Mark Bonnar) court, but has to be a man. So she dresses and makes herself look like one. -- In Shakespeare's time, this character was played by a man pretending to be a woman who is pretending to be a man. As if the plot isn't complicated enough!




Orsino is in love with Olivia (played by Indira Varma-- stage center). Olivia is also the woman whom Malvolio (right) thinks is in love with him. She is not in love with either.

Viola is sent by Orsino to declare his love for Olivia and Olivia, in turn, falls in love with Viola masquerading as a man.

It all comes to a conclusion when Viola's not dead brother comes on the scene and Olivia, thinking it is "Viola", makes him wed her. All is revealed when both Viola and her brother enter the scene together. Viola relates that she is a woman and Orsino, whom she has been in love with all along, is suddenly no longer infatuated with Olivia and takes her to his heart.



Another pic of Viola. I've just come across Victoria Hamilton in a BBC costume drama series (an actual costume series!) called Lark Rise Over Candleford . I've sincerely liked her from the start. Years ago people were saying she is the new Judi Dench. One critic today said that this is no longer true; that she has come into her own.

So what happens to Jacobi's Malvolio during this time? The true comic gem of the play is that in the letter written by the maid and the two fools pretending to be Olivia (a lot of pretending going on) it is written that he has to do all these strange things so that she knows that he is also in love with her. So that he has to wear bright yellow socks with cross garters and smile ostentatiously. This is the most comical scene, as Malvolio, who never smiles, has to learn how -- of course, it is all overly-dramatized by Jacobi, which makes it all the more delightful as he rarely plays comic parts. He is thought to be insane, is thrown in a dungeon, and by the end of it, when the true origins of the letter are revealed, he states that he will get his revenge, before pompously walking off the stage. We never know what the revenge will be; the play finishes with Viola and Orsino's declaration of love. So, one could argue, the play doesn't really have an ending.



"If I were to see this played upon a stage, I would condemn it as an improbable fiction" is a line spoken by one of the characters as regards the plagiarized letter and the subsequent events that transpire. This is Shakespeare's way of acknowledging the unreality of the events he is presenting.

it is improbable that one should mistake Viola as a man, especially Orsino who, at least in this production, delights in getting as close to him/her as possible. (Homo-eroticism in this play is more than just implied). That Olivia should mistake Viola as a man as well as then mistake Viola's brother as the same person is more than highly unlikely.

But in the end -- whether realistic or no -- the play is terribly fun. Something of an almost sinister delight. And, with the right actors, nearly believable.