SHAKESPEARE wrote his plays for all-male casts, and now the Propeller Company is giving a superb illustration of why his men made such great women.
Of course, gender bending has always been a rich vein of comedy appeal but this is not slapstick, farce, nor even pantomime.
Propeller, who wowed Merseyside audiences with The Taming of the Shrew, have shown just how rich that vein is when interpreting Shakespeare. There is not an innuendo unturned, an entendre un- doubled, a nod, wink nor gesture ignored.
The company’s multi-talented cast know exactly how bawdy the Bard of Avon could and should be, yet Shakespeare’s flowing prose and poetry remains untainted and intact, undiluted by any cheap, misguided desire to be different.
Add to the Propeller’s all-male cast the fact that Twelfth Night’s plot revolves around an intriguing mix of mistaken identity, and a certain contrived sexual deception, and another layer of Shakespeare is revealed for all to see.
In addition to men playing women, we have a male playing a girl who is pretending to be a boy and finding himself being loved by a man who is playing a woman – you probably have the picture by now.
Instead of the chaos it could create, the Propeller ensemble produces a comedy of such startlingly clear and superbly accessible fun.
The drama unfolds and leaps off the stage to be greeted by waves of laughter and knowing gestures – and the cast seem to revel enthusiastically in the response.
In an ensemble cast of such diverse talent, it is perhaps unfair to single out performances but Tony Bell’s Feste, the court jester, and Jason Baughan’s Sir Toby Belch are quite superb as is Dugald Bruce-Lockhart as Olivia Tam Williams and both Viola and Cesario and Chris Myles as the outrageous Maria.
This is an extremely talented company telling a wonderful tale – and telling it wonderfully, into the bargain.
This is Shakespeare, perhaps not as we know it, but – almost certainly – exactly how the Bard would have intended his audiences to see it.
