SOURCE: "Great 'Night' Out," in Punch, Vol. 293, No. 7668, December 16, 1987, p. 53.

"If music be the food of love, play on" is arguably the most famous and oft-quoted opening line in all Shakespearian comedy. It takes, therefore, a certain amount of courage to start Twelfth Night without it, or indeed that whole first scene. Instead, Kenneth Branagh's new production at Riverside Studios plunges us straight into scene two and Viola's shipwrecked arrival: "What country, friends, is this?" "This is Illyria, lady" but it is like no Illyria we have ever seen before. Far from any seashore, all later references to May mornings and sunshine ignored, we would appear to be deep in some park surrounding Anton Chekhov's winter residence. There, taking the play's title quite literally, the designer Bunny Christie offers us snowflakes, half-ruined statues, immense gothic tombstones and a generally ravishing if melancholic landscape apparently only waiting for someone...