Twelfth Night

June 2009

Shakespeare's best loved comedy of mistaken identity, shipwrecked maidens and yellow cross-gartered stockings comes to Central Studio.

This is the fourth full length evening of work from the Proteans, and is our second forray into Shakespeare.

'Twelfth Night' is one of Shakespeare's best loved gender bending comedies - Viola having been shipwrecked in the strange land of Illyria, dresses as a man in order to find employment in a country where she has no status. However, she doesn't bank on falling in love with her employer, nor the woman her employer is in love with falling for her as well!

We chose the eighties as a period setting for the piece because sexual politics were high on the agenda - both in terms of how women coped in the workplace and also through androgynous fashions at the time. For our Viola to find herself in the middle of an eighties corporate environment, the option of becoming a man in order to get on seemed a realistic proposition!

Production Team

Director and Designer - Mary Swan
Original Music - Paul Wild
Lighting Design and Operation - Paul Phillipson
Assistant Technician - Josh Davey

Cast

Helen Palmer - FESTE
Richard Morgans - SERVANT/OFFICER
Petra Read - MARY
Clive Slatter - ANDREW AGUECHEEK
Brenda Palmer - FABIEN
Charles Perrett - SEBASTIAN
Jenni Warren - ANTONIA
Peter Chiverton - SIR TOBY BELCH
Bryn Studwick - MALVOLIO
Martin Palmer - ORSINO
Karen Moore - VALENTINE
Donna Marie Beeson - VIOLA
Sally Lamacraft - OLIVIA
Cathy Clark - THE JESTER
Jeanette Hobden - MARIA
Becky Wilson - SERVANT/POLICE OFFICER
Karl Presser - CAPTAIN/PRIEST