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Here it is, then. Barely a year after she directed her first Shakespeare play for the Globe, this ‘Twelfth Night’ marks artistic director Emma Rice’s second and last for the outdoor theatre. Pending her final, indoor season, it may be her last show for the Globe ever.
And it’s a huge huge shame: Rice is famously not a Bardolator, but the collision of her expansive whimsy and Shakespeare’s wild, freeform comedy once again hits home with this joyous cuddle of a production.
Rice would be well within her rights to use this moment to troll the Globe board for ousting over a disagreement on her use of amplified light and sound. But to some extent she’s already done that with the season opener, Daniel Kramer’s cheerily obnoxious ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
Instead her 'Twelfth Night' – which does admittedly use amplified light and sound – is a generous farewell to the Globe’s audience. Lez Brotherson’s set is a big boat entitled SS Unity, awash with glitter, song and smiles.
Carl Grose and Ian Ross’s psychedelic song arrangements are lovely, cabaret star Le Gateau Chocolat is transcendentally fabulous as a sequin encrusted Feste, and Rice regular Katy Owen effortlessly steals every scene as a vey small, very fastidious, very Welsh Malvolio, whose eventual humiliation by his mistress Olivia is unexpectedly poignant. It’s not an evening for many tears, though. ‘Twelfth Night’ is usually quite a ‘serious’ comedy, but Rice’s take on the story of the crossdressing-related adventures and subsequent reunion of twins Viola (Anita Joy-Uwajeh) and Sebastian (John Pfumojena) following separation in a shipwreck is dispatched with a big, dreamy grin that never leaves the happy resolution in doubt.
It's not quite as brilliant as Rice's '…Dream’ of last year. The repurposing of much of the verse as songs is fun and keeps things moving briskly, but it feels like we lose a bit of character depth as a result (it's about 15 minutes before anybody actually talks). And it unavoidably takes a fairly similar approach to the NT’s just-finished ‘Twelfth Night’, and feels a little outclassed by that show’s superb light relief characters – Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek – by comparison.
It's still a hoot, a joyous sort-of sign-off that was hopefully great fun for Rice to make. There are two run throughs of 'We Are Family’, just to ram the message of togetherness home, and in a week that has been more than trying for the national morale, this show is the hug we all need.