Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare

Performed in October 2001 at the Sir Bernard Lovell School

Twelfth Night is a comedy of hopelessly unrequited passions and mistaken identity. Orsino is in love with the noblewoman Olivia. She, however, has fallen for his servant Cesario, who is actually Viola, a woman disguised as a man, who loves Orsino: confusion is rife. Meanwhile, Olivia's arrogant steward Malvolio is cruelly tricked by her uncle Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the maidservant Maria into believing his mistress loves him.

The title is a little misleading since there is no reference to Twelfth Night in the play. In fact the script strongly suggests it takes place in late spring or early summer and it was perhaps intended to evoke a festive occasion when revelry and folly were allowed to turn the real world on its head. Shakespeare therefore sets the piece in "Illyria" which, in this day and age would be the equivalent of somewhere like a Mediterranean holiday island, combing the romantic with the rowdy and not a little drunkenness.

We therefore set our production in Ibiza - Shakespeare had already put in songs, all we added was music and, of course, dancing.

Photos of the production