Christopher Gray finds Filter Theatre’s fun is very infectious

If Music be the Food of Love . . . Prepare for Indigestion. The title of a 1967 album from the cheesy pop group Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich sprang into my mind at the start of Filter Theatre’s hilarious — and utterly irreverent — version of Twelfth Night.

This was partly, I suppose, because of all the instruments, amplifiers and other technical equipment sharing the Playhouse stage with the actors. There also lurked the fear that some members of the audience might not quite ‘get’ what was going on and experience just the bodily discomfort that Dave and gang foresaw.

No need to worry though: as the 95 minutes of (highly edited) action proceeded, it was quite clear that the fun being had by the actors and musicians — in some cases one and the same people — had infected those watching. We were all in on the joke.

Besides, the fame of this production had gone ahead of it. Conceived under Sean Holmes’s direction for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works festival seven years ago, it has since been toured widely by Filter, though not previously to Oxford.

The play’s famous opening sentence quoted above sets the jolly tone for the show as Jonathan Broadbent, playing the lovelorn Count Orsino, affects to forget his lines and appeals for prompts from the stalls as his laborious delivery proceeds.

Soon we meet the shipwrecked Viola (Sarah Belcher) as she learns of the state of affairs in Illyria from the BBC shipping forecast. Having resolved to enter Orsino’s service in the guise of a man, she borrows the hat and jacket required for ‘Cesario’ from members of the audience. Her socks, removed and rolled up, supply the necessary padding down below. This is generous enough to prompt the remark: “He’s very well . . . favoured.”

Thereafter the action proceeds pretty much as we know it, with the haughty Olivia (Liz Fitzgibbon) falling head over heels for the ‘boy’ when he is dispatched to her as Orsino’s wooing emissary. Her writhing, horizontal ecstasy, in the manner of a demented rocker, is a hoot.

Something of the same overcomes Fergus O’Donnell’s Malvolio after he is tricked into believing his mistress Olivia loves him and appears before her in those famous yellow stockings. Besides a pair of tiny gold knickers, these are in fact all he does wear. By contrast, his chief tormentor, Sir Toby Belch (Geoffrey Lumb), is the only character to appear in full Tudor fig. His Special-Brew-fuelled nighttime wassailing with the somersaulting Sir Andrew Aguecheek — the excellent Mr Broadbent again — is the comic set-piece of the show. Steadily building, visually and musically, over perhaps ten minutes, it ends in a near-riot, complete with a conga dance featuring members of the audience.

This is five-star frivolity.

Twelfth Night
Oxford Playhouse
Until Saturday
Tickets: 01865305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com