Twelfth Night | Kew Gardens

The last thing you might expect when watching a performance on a long summer’s evening is to be serenaded with ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. But given that the play in question is Twelfth Night, written by William Shakespeare to be performed during the post-Christmas court festivities, it is in fact entirely appropriate.

This summer, the Australian Shakespeare Company returns to Kew Gardens for its eighth season, presenting three productions: The Wind in the Willows, Jack and the Beanstalk and Twelfth Night. The ASC’s artistic director Glenn Elston directs Twelfth Night for Theatre on Kew, with original music by Paul Norton and choreography by Sue Ellen Shook. 

The rendition of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ which opens the show takes the audience on a whistle-stop tour of Twelfth Night’s complex plot, which relies, as with so many Shakespeare plays, on a web of misunderstandings and deceptions. The set is perfectly constructed for this, with a whole host of compartments, secret window and moving parts which allow the performers to appear and disappear, often to great comedic effect, and gaps in the backdrop for them to peep around, while also utilising the gardens themselves and at times the audience seating as an extension of the stage.

Twelfth Night begins with the story of Viola (Louise Hoare) and Sebastian (Scott Middleton), twins separated by a shipwreck, each believing the other to be dead. Viola disguises herself as a man, Cesario, to join the court of Duke Orsino (Hugh Sexton) and help him to woo Lady Olivia (Nicole Nabout), but the path of true love does not run smooth. 

But, in this version, greater emphasis is given to the comedic subplot, in which Olivia’s crowd of servants, relations, and hangers-on, including drunken uncle Sir Toby Belch (Jackson McGovern), hapless suitor Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Tony Rive) and maid Maria (Monica Nash), hatch a plot to embarrass the uptight Malvolio (Maverick Newman), all while entertaining the audience with their drunken antics. 

These antics often require audience participation, with one usher warning that “this is the kind of show where the actors run up and down the aisles and maybe sit in your lap.” There was none of the latter on press night, but audience members were encouraged to sing, dance, and even drink along, an addition which landed better with some than others. 

This is a play with music at its heart (its opening lines, after all, call for there to be “excess of it”) and Paul Norton’s songs, performed primarily by Alex Cooper as jester Feste, help to envelop us in this, even if they sometimes make it somewhat unclear where or when the action is meant to be set. 

The company as a whole is strong, and the camaraderie between them is clear, with notable performances from Sexton as Duke Orsino, Rive as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Larissa Teale making the most of the relatively small part of Fabian. Louise Hoare’s delivery of Viola’s famous speech on love is also worthy of mention.

Naturally, in an outdoor venue, there is some ambient noise to contend with, most notably from Kew’s position under the Heathrow flight path, but the occasional distraction is more than made up for by the atmospheric setting. Unfortunately, there were also a few sound quality issues at times, with performers’ lines occasionally too quiet and some mic interference, but this did not majorly detract from what was otherwise a flawless show. 

For a night of laughs under the stars after a day exploring a London landmark, there are few better options than Theatre on Kew’s Twelfth Night.

Twelfth Night runs at Kew Gardens until 30th August, with entry to the Gardens included in the ticket price. For more information and tickets, follow the link here.

★★★★☆ (4*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review