Directed by Michael Grandage
Donmar at Wyndhams Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London, until 7 March 2009.

The Donmar’s top drawer cast is led by Sir Derek Jacobi for this comedy about trousers – who wears them, their style and what advantages they can bring, especially to women.

This universal favourite of plays has familiar Shakespearean devices: stormy shipwreck, hidden love, mistaken identity, even twins. Viola (Victoria Hamilton, no stranger to trouser roles) is thrown onto the shores of Ilyria, and then into unfulfilled turmoil when she adopts menswear as Cesario and agrees to assist a man she’s fallen for, Duke Orsino (Mark Bonnar), in his pursuit of the beautiful, but bereaved, Olivia.

Indira Varma is Olivia, breathtaking in Victorian black in her first scene, but transformed by Cesario – she seems not to notice how curvy this bright boy is. Soon, the mourning clothes are discarded for high fashion 1930’s flares, brogues and Pringle pullover as she presses her suit to the reluctant, er, youth.

Then there are Malvolio’s trousers; thanks to the forged letter plot by Olivia’s maid Maria (Samantha Spiro), Sir Toby Belch (Ron Cook) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Guy Henry), Olivia’s self-important chief steward puts on a blazer and khaki shorts, cross-gartered yellow stockings and a fixed smile – garments and behaviour she finds eccentric to the point of madness.

Sir Derek, justifiably one of our national theatrical treasures, makes a wonderful job of the letter scene, abandoning himself to his fantasy that Olivia wants to marry him, and cracking his reluctant face into an exquisitely cheesy grin. For some reason, he’s chosen to follow the Frankie Howerd route to unveil the new Malvolio to his appalled mistress. Nevertheless, the audience loves it, which will make his choice hard to escape, and hard for us to feel any sympathy when Malvolio’s flung into a cellar for his pains.

He is released eventually, and all delicious confusion is resolved when Viola’s twin brother Sebastian appears from the dead to consummate Olivia’s powerful urges and allow Viola to come out as Orsino’s hidden admirer. Grandage allows a homoerotic hint of disappointment from the Duke who was beginning to find a curious pleasure in the company of his willing go-between.

So, trousers have provided moments of freedom to explore a new world of self-expression. What fun it must have been for Elizabethan boys playing women playing men.

You’ll enjoy Grandage’s production for its clarity and the chance to see a stage legend in action. But as a massive bonus you’ll also enjoy one of the best Belch/Aguecheek relationships I’ve seen, along with a superbly complex Feste in the mellifluous Zubin Varla – he has some of the best observations in the play, “What is love? ’tis not hereafter;/Present mirth hath present laughter;/What’s to come is still unsure”.

Bill Bingham - December 2008