Quite a deal of poison has been seeping into this play over the past few years, but John Caird's production is the first I have seen that projects Twelfth Night as an all-out dark comedy.

This is good news not only for jaded old spectators who have seen the piece too often. There is a limit to the amount of fun that can be extracted from the drinking scene and permutations of Malvolio's letter in a play that was never more than intermittently uproarious. And there is everything to be said for muting the comedy for once and giving full attention to the central matter of the illusions and frenzies of love.

Illyria in this version contracts to a love shrine. Robin Don (making his Stratford debut) offers a gloomy rock-strewn promontory flanked by an overgrown gateway to Olivia's estate and surmounted by the bare ruined boughs of a towering tree. Here the obsessed Orisino is permanently encamped: and the only modification for the other scenes is the withdrawal of the gate. The air is filled with the surge of the sea and melancholy sea music (by Ilona Sekacz), sometimes projecting an atmosphere of heart-break, sometimes swelling into operatic violence as for the first appearance of the shipwrecked Viola.

What emerges in this setting is a tragicomedy of erotic errors. All those involved in it are possessed and hurried on to a fate over which they have no control. Mr Caird's company show most of the character, even the lucky ones, to be mismatched. There could be no more hopeless union than that between John Thaw's swaggering, bullying Toby and Gemma Jones's Maria, not a merry prankster but a prim household official, every bit as status-conscious as Malvolio, who characteristically dusts the tree stump before sitting down.

Sir Andrew is obviously a non-stater, but that news would be wasted on Daniel Massey, his face breaking into pathetically eager smiles at every sight of the icy Olivia. As for Olivia herself she speaks for all the others in her lines on catching the plague.

Sarah Berger plays her as a sharp-featured heiress to whom disdain comes easily, who is then reduced to naked vulnerable desire; and when she intervenes in the duel (Toby just having landed Sebastian a blow in the groin) she falls on the aggressor fists flailing and pummelling him to the ground.

Most pitiful of all is Emry James's Malvolio a strutting velvet uniformed grotesque who sheds all his self-love once his mistress seems to be within reach, and finally appears before her to put simple half-broken questions. When he gets his cruel answer, he bows respectfully to the company and only screams his last line after making a dignified exit. And it is no threat of revenge, simply an explosion of intolerable pain.

As one of the few who benefit from the happy wrack, Zoe Wannamaker's Viola is at a disadvantage in a show that reserves its main sympathy or the losers. Her Viola, blank-faced and inwardly suffering, encompasses lyricism and fun, but never takes over the emotional centre.

Of the non-lovers, the most interesting is Richard O'Callaghan's Feste. We have grown used to seeing Feste as the soul of Twelfth Night, but Mr O'Callaghan presents him as a razor sharp and spiteful observer of the surrounding follies: making a living out of them, and cherishing grievances with a real zest for revenge. The Topaz scene is the ugliest I can remember—even with the comic addition of the real Sir Topaz wandering bewildered over the back on his way to marry Sebastian to Olivia.

The set finally comes into its own at the news of the marriage and Orsino's (Miles Anderson) attempts to sacrifice Cesario. The madness is such that at that moment the shrine almost does become a sacrificial altar. As it happens, there is marriage instead of death, but as the nuptual parties take their leave there is a crash of thunder and Feste begins his song in the pouring rain.