National Theater’s Twelfth Night & Queer Tragedy: A Review
By: Raquel, Hale
Tags: Shakespeare, Literature, Review, Theatre, Twelfth Night

Hearing Viola deliver her Poor Monster speech I knew that the National Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was not for me. “And I Poor Monster am just as fond of him” she laughs, the line delivered fast and off the cuff. It was in the laugh ― one of the more lighthearted aspects of this production― I realized it wasn’t going to be a romp through tender errors of gender and love.

Instead, director Simon Godwin brings Twelfth Night’s tragedies under the microscope, placing them in high contrast and sometimes even in confrontation with its moments of raucous laughter. It asks after those characters who are pushed aside for the sake of the play’s “happy” ending. What of the broken friendship between Sir Toby and Sir Andrew? What of the love lost between Antonio and Sebastian? What of Olivia who marries a stranger? And most of all what of mistreated Malvolio (here genderbent as Malvolia)?

Tamsin Grieg as Malvolia was a showstopper and most of the points of detraction that I note here serve, on the other hand, to make her shine. Fans of Malvolio will love this show, which offers a rich and complex portrait― a strict, harsh, yet hopeful woman longing for her employer’s love only to be misled and let down by everyone around her including the audience who she holds accountable at the end pointing out and proclaiming, “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you”. Grieg’s Malvolia is too quick to hope for Olivia’s good opinion, drunk on the self-importance that defines her. By the end, in a shattering moment where she tears off her wig, Malvolia has lost herself to the games and abuses of others. Too many warm moments between other characters would have softened the blow against her.

Godwin also makes an attempt to address the queer aspects of the show, with Malvolia (as well as with Antonio). However, tragic gays who lose out on love is an overused trope and is dissatisfying― especially in this particular play that has the opportunity to explore happy bisexual and/or polyamorous Olivia and Orsino, and a queer trans Viola. The scene in the Elephant including a brief drag show interlude seemed an excessive, but ultimately insubstantial push to address themes of gender nonconformity in a production more focused on highlighting the interpersonal consequences of a comedy of errors. It is, of course, a call again to look at the crux of a Malvolia-centered production: How does her womanhood change the character? How does her love for another woman change how we view her? For me, it’s sadder. A familiar narrative of queer tragedy and of the performative and futile fate of the woman at the center of that story. It’s a statement worth making, to be sure, but even Malvolia’s burlesque final costume (yellow stockings, cross-gartered!) lacks the carnivalesque reversals that have always drawn me to Twelfth Night.

The set, costumes, and lighting served to invoke a lonely modern world. The revolve that turned to reveal each new location was fun, but cyclical movement suggested a sense of inevitability in the occurring tragedies, especially combined with the blue lighting, blue-toned sets, and costumes. Where other period-accurate productions are often made of rosy nostalgia, the National Theater presents a Twelfth Night woven of bluesy melancholia. And while I prefer the play’s playful tug on the fabric of gender and sexuality, Godwin’s focus on tragedy and on centering Malvolia is successful in its own ways.

Final Verdict: Fun and melancholy, but lacks tenderness.