The Sunday Times
by John Peter, Sunday June 4, 2006

Twelfth Night, Lowry, Salford

Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl production has a dangerous magic. This is an all-male, modern-dress production with Russian actors, with the worst English surtitles ever. So ignore the screens and fix your gaze on the actors, who combine athletic excitement with an almost miraculous sensitivity. The play is about music, love, sexuality and deception. Andrei Kuzitchev, a man, plays Viola, a woman who disguises herself as a man. This is not the same thing as the Elizabethan practice of boy actors: here, you’re dealing with the painful-comic ironies of mature sexuality being used as a ploy, both to feed love and to hide it.

For Orsino (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), music is both ironic excitement and an aid to cooling off. Malvolio (Dmitry Shcherbina), a lofty, handsome man, fantasising about Olivia and social advancement, is deceiving himself. The first half is all in black (designer, Nick Ormerod), with Orsino’s attendants wearing the high-collared uniforms from the age of Tsar Nicholas II. The set consists of four black linen wall hangings rolling down from above; in the second half, everything is cream and white. This is the kind of sophisticated simplicity that reminds you of Peter Brook’s best work: it tells the story and defines the mood....

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