Ruth Leon recommends…Twelfth Night – Shakespeare’s Globe
Ruth Leon recommendsTwelfth Night – Shakespeare’s Globe
Click here for tickets : £10 + £2.50 transaction charge
Livestream on 23 October 7 pm BST 2 pm NY 8 pm CET
Shakespeare did enough gender-bending for any lifetime and Twelfth Night is only one of his plays where girls are boys and vice versa. Not content with Shakespeare’s gender muddles, Sean Holmes’s brash and bouncy production of Twelfth Night in an American setting, boasts a crazy mixed-up gender-blind casting that we’re not supposed to notice. Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Fabian and Feste are all played by female actors and I’m relieved to report that Olivia and Viola are too, otherwise I’d be so confused I wouldn’t be able to recognise the play. We’ve just got one chance to unravel it all.
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God, I am sick of gender-blind casting, and this play makes it super-stupid.
Maybe after we see a male Hedda Gabler or Mother Courage…
I know they were all male in Shakespeare’s day, but still…what is the point of gender-blind players in a play where the sexual identity of characters is confused?