Twelfth Night (Vol. 26) | Robert W. Speaight (review date Winter 1969)
Robert W. Speaight (review date Winter 1969)
SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XX, No. 1, Winter, 1969, pp. 438-39.
When after 50 years of playgoing you cast your eye down a program of Twelfth Night, pick out the characters of Orsino, Feste, Maria, Aguecheek, Malvolio, Viola, and Olivia, and conclude that you have never seen these parts better played, and rarely played as well—when you leave the theater with tears in your eyes and laughter on your lips—then the performance you have seen bids fair to be definitive. Of course the bid fails because there are always other things to say, and another generation of actors and directors knocking on the door to say them. But John Barton's Twelfth Night of 1969 was the best, absolutely, that I remember. Peter Hall, in the first year of his directorate, was aiming at very much the same effect, but in the case of Olivia and Feste pushed his theory too far....
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