Review: Twelfth Night

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Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry.

from Richard Lutz.

If you like your Shakespeare irreverent, anarchic, modernised to the point of Mumford and Sons or even (a bit retro here) Ozzy Osbourne, why not dip into Filter Theatre’s rendition of Twelfth Night?

It’s fun, irrepressibly whack-o, anarchic and a  cross between Frank Zappa and Vic and Bob.

Let’s just say the 90 minuter (with no interval) zips by. And at times there seems to be two productions at once: the first is on the stage, littered with bass guitars, drums kit and a cello or two, and the  other was the audience of the mid teen girls from a local school who gasped as Malvolio stripped down to his yellow socks and gold shimmery teeny weeny bikini undies to lust after Olivia.

Filter strips out the long screeds of old fashioned Jacobean lines to narrow it down to the Bard’s words that will move the story fast forward: a story of missing twins, drunken shenanigans, mix and match sexuality, love, love lost and, of course, love found.

Hats off to the hard working troupe who never stop acting, musicifying or dancing (there’s even a tumbler) and, guess what, there’s a good take on audience participation which ends with pizza being delivered and doled out.

Not half bad that, if you’re peckish and in for some fast paced laughs.

Tix: 02476 524524

Until 1 Mar 2014 and then touring