Shakespearean Criticism

Twelfth Night (Vol. 26) | Jeremy Kingston (review date 29 June 1966)

Jeremy Kingston (review date 29 June 1966)

SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Punch, Vol. 250, No. 6564, June 29, 1966, p. 961.

Clifford Williams directed a joyous Comedy of Errors a few years back and more recently extracted much hilarity from Marlowe's Jew of Malta. His Twelfth Night (Stratford-upon-Avon), altogether a trickier play, comes across as an uneven, rather lolloping affair. Excellently inventive at times—even making fresh sense of some obscure Shakespeare allusions—too many scenes give an impression of under-rehearsal. It was as if we were watching a run-through a week before opening night at the end of which the director would hop on to the stage with a file of notes and advise the cast where to give what bits the extra fillip. Perhaps in a week or two the fillips and the finish will be there.

Sally Jacobs' setting is a courtyard bounded by a line of high arches with a minstrels' gallery above....

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