Castle Tour 2017 - Twelfth Night
This is Shakespeare’s greatest and last pure comedy, the master at the height of his art. The play explores the great obsessions of human life: love, jealousy, class, gender, greed and passion. And if it explores the serious within us it also revels in merriment: drinking has a key place in the play as does song and laughter in all its forms from melancholy wit to slapstick comedy. The enemy of laughter is the butt of the play’s humour: Malvolio the Puritan, a spoil sport in the palaces of fun. Set against Malvolio’s malevolence is the swashbuckling joy of Sir Toby Belch, the mischievous servant Maria and the wit of the wise clown, Feste. No play of Shakespeare has so many characters in what might be called a main role: plots interweave with subplots until we are almost giddy. At the centre of the many deceptions stands Viola, an extraordinary creation, a woman who prefers to be a man and as such provokes a love she cannot return in the Lady Olivia while cultivating an impossible passion for her manly master, Orsino. Meanwhile her (lost) twin brother Sebastian appears to rouse the passions of one Antonio while accidentally securing the hand of Lady Olivia. Nothing is what it seems: life and love collide and create a comedy of errors that spreads confusion even as it reveals the essential truth of human nature: perhaps nothing is what it appears to be, but beneath appearances the truth will out and the truth is very much to do with love.
TNT, directed by Paul Stebbings, have been producing Shakespeare’s comedies world wide for over ten years to great acclaim. An ensemble of veteran performers have been gathered to grapple with this magnificent work, with music added live under the direction of composer John Kenny. We invite you into a wonderland, created by the greatest story teller ever to grace the planet, one who liked a drink and loathed a puritan and above all knew how to dissect love, which is both tragic and hilarious: the most powerful emotion known to us stumbling humans.
This production tours from China to Britain, from Norway to France and Japan to Germany, join us in an evening of laughter and song
