A Twelfth Night to remember

Twelfth Night
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London, until June 8

There’s a Jean Paul Gaultier vibe to the adverts for Twelfth Night – three androgynous sailors posing at a bar – and, while none of them get to appear in Owen Horsley’s production, it’s a fair reflection of what’s in store for the punters.

It’s a clever conceit since Shakespeare’s riotous comedy involves a lot of individuals not being what they appear to be. The much-put-upon heroine Viola is, after all, required to dress up as a man to make her way in the world after surviving a shipwreck.

The show is sexy, stylish and with stunning good looks (take a bow, Basia Bińkowska, the set designer) and it’s also effortlessly seductive. It makes me excited for the future of Regent’s Park Open Theatre now that Drew McOnie has taken over as artistic director.

Evelyn Miller makes a fine job of Viola and there is a wonderfully drawn Malvolio – haughty, vain and proud but with more than a hint of vulnerability – from the superb Richard Cant. As Viola’s twin brother Sebastian – also unbeknownst to her a survivor of the shipwreck – Andro Cowperthwaite is on great form and the scenes between the two of them work a treat as, dressed as a man, Miller looks exactly like him.

There’s always been a prejudice in some quarters that open-air theatre isn’t serious theatre, but, since the 1930s, this venue has been challenging that snobby assumption. Shakespeare works brilliantly in the open air, and, on a warm night, it is quite simply the most enticing theatre in the capital, if not the country.

McOnie, incidentally, has a neat sense of symmetry and history in picking on Twelfth Night for his first season: that was the show that got the open-air theatre started under Robert Atkins, its founding artistic director.