Word: illyria
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...shades that are raised and lowered with annoying frequency (Olivia's summer resort, and last resort). In the center we have a candy-cane flagpole with pennon, and two bathhouses on wheels, with red and green stripes. Assorted persons cavort about in sailor suits or swim suits. No Illyria on earth was ever like this...
...juvenile cuteness of most of its productions. The 200,000 ticket-queuers anticipated this season must expect only Jello-weight Shakespeare inside the handsome teakwood playhouse emblazoned with British heraldry and flying pennants. This year's opening Twelfth Night was greeted with morning-after queasiness by the critics: Illyria became a British seaside resort circa 1830, and most of the cast appeared to be on shore leave from H.M.S. Pinafore, including tremolo-prone Katharine Hepburn, an exponent of the Bryn Mawr school of Shakespearean diction. The Connecticut Stratfordians followed up with a becalmed Tempest. Expected later with some foreboding...
This Old Vic Twelfth Night could hardly be brighter. To expect the plot to sprint, the jokes to put on new leaves, the performing never to be mannered or coy would be unreasonable. Illyria still keeps its Old World tempo, and the plot its tollgates. But the poetry dances in and out of the prankishness, the air is brushed with light, the carousing invokes no shudders and provides some laughs. Richard Wordsworth's Malvolio is grandly absurd in the letter scene, and in his yellow stockings and cross garters, really funny. Jane Downs's Olivia, Judi Dench...
...grin and a pout, but it never really communicates honest feeling. She seems, however, warm-hearted and lithe, and is quite consistent. Feste, the Jester, played by Eugene Gervasi, moves and gesticulates very well, though his throaty, stilted speech is perhaps affected. Marcellus Winston, as Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, mouths his lines in a monotone and seems insensible of what he is saying...
...into a heifer whenever his wife hove in sight. But Hera (Mrs. Zeus) was a shade too smart for him. One day she archly asked her husband to give her the heifer as a pet. To get out of the fix, poor Io galloped down over the plains of Illyria, across the Balkan Mountains and swam the Bosporus. She kept going over land & sea until she reached the Nile...