SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Plays & Players, No. 408, September, 1987, pp. 16-17.

Shakespeare may have had the taste of olives in his mouth when he wrote Twelfth Night. Viola, Malvolio, Olivia not only have an anagrammatical closeness of sound, but during the play they are lovingly crushed, and while one yields pure oil, another a bitter taste, the three as characters have flavour rather than depth. The lovesick Orsino, his name a cross between arse and obscene, is himself as about as enticing as a whole bowl of olives; Feste, with his callous wit and melancholy songs, spits out the stones.

This outstanding production has been set by the director, Bill Alexander, and designer Kit Surrey, far from the Jacobethan box-hedges and well to the east of Illyria in a sun-baked village square whose Greek Orthodox ikon is tucked away in a wall niche. The confusion woven...