.png)
SCENE IT: TWELFTH NIGHT unleashes a very midsummer madness
- Maria Kearns
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Maria Kearns
The Maynardville Open-Air Festival’s 70th annual Shakespeare offering opened to a packed house and brought with it a very welcome canopy of cooling cloud after an uncomfortably hot weekend in Cape Town.
The antics on stage were anything but chilly, however; director Steven Stead’s version of perennial favourite TWELFTH NIGHT transports the audience to a pair of villas in sultry 1960s Italy and introduces a cast of characters that positively sizzles under the imagined mediterranean sun.
In the aftermath of the shipwreck that brings the play’s main character to shore, the action splashes through the shallows straight into the intoxicating depths of la dolce vita thanks to Greg King’s set, the well-appointed exterior of a warm, inviting villa (with a grand piano in the courtyard, of course), and Maritha Visagie’s costumes, which recall the sharp lines and lazy billows of pieces from Fellini films.
TWELFTH NIGHT is the origin of an alarming number of supremely quotable lines that have, consequently, been used to death out of context (think ‘If music be the food of love, play on’, ‘Better a witty fool than a foolish wit’, ‘I was adored once, too’, ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon ’em’…), a fact that presents each new interpretation with a built-in headache: How do you make your production sound fresh and exciting when just about every audience member knows what’s coming?
As Stead’s offering proves, having access to an accomplished cast and encouraging them to have as much fun as possibleclearly helps.
This production showcases the talents of Emily Child (Viola), Jenny Stead (Olivia), David Viviers (Feste), Jock Kleynhans (Orsino), Graham Hopkins (Malvolio), Michael Richard (Sir Toby Belch), Natasha Sutherland (Maria), Aidan Scott (Sir Andrew Aguecheek), Lungile Lallie (Fabian/Valentine), William Young (Sebastian), Ntlanhla Morgan Kutu (Antonio), and Paul Savage (Sea Captain).
The pace rarely dips and director Stead and the actors have truly managed to embrace the humour in Shakespeare’s text—they don’t shy away from using meaningful pauses and broad body language to land a few jokes, and the show’s the better for it. It’s always a good sign when Shakespeare’s lines are spoken like they could’ve been written this century (without the clunky insertion of modern references and forced contemporary gags), an accomplishment this company deserves praise for. The production’s easy flow is interrupted, however, by the puzzling appearance, some distance into the play, of an inexplicable—and apparently catching— Brummie accent, but we’ll ignore that.
Child’s nimble performance of Viola/Cesario’s tightrope act is a delight to behold, as is Jenny Stead’s truly funny rapid conversion from staid mourning sister to rampant sex kitten in the oblivious Cesario’s presence.
Kleynhans’ decidedly unserious Orsino revels in his status of wounded suitor as he struts about the stage declaiming grandiosely about his lovesickness.
Hopkins and Richard especially seem to be having a tremendous amount of fun, the former inhabiting the role of the acerbic butler as if born to wear Malvolio’s coattails; the latter leaning enthusiastically (and often perilously literally) into the cloud of alcoholic fumes that is Sir Toby.
Sutherland, Scott, and Lallie prove able allies—amici, aiders-and-abetters—to Richard’s Sir Toby, with Scott especially having a riotously good time bringing the foolish Aguecheek to life as an impressionable, cowardly young ne’er-do-well.
If the promised antics of a cross-gartered Graham Hopkins and sonorously swaggering Michael Richard somehow aren’t enough to lure you to Wynberg, let David Viviers’ note-perfect turn as the sad clown Feste convince you. While every character in this play tries to present a public face quite at odds with their private persona, nowhere is this dichotomy as apparent as in the sudden transformations Viviers’ Feste undergoes through the merest twitch of the facial muscles or arapid change of posture. The audience is permitted only brief glimpses of the heartbreak under the suave exterior of this Noel Cowardesque figure who is allowed to roam the grounds of the upmarket villas and remark on the foibles of his social betters in exchange for his continued services as louche entertainer. Viviers’ performances of Wessel Odendaal’s melodies, written especially for this production, are moving and succeed in tying the play’s various intrigues together.
Even if you’ve seen the play performed many times before, there’s much to delight in in this energetic, sweet, and sinceretake on TWELFTH NIGHT.
TWELFTH NIGHT, part of the Maynardville Open-Air Festival, will be on at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre until the 7 March 2026. Tickets are available through Quicket.