Frights and delights on Liverpool's big night: QUENTIN LETTS reviews Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night (Liverpool Everyman)

Rating:
Verdict: A welcome return
Liverpool's Everyman theatre has reopened after a refit costing £27 million and it looks terrific. North-West England’s greatest city again has a major, high-minded stage.
Artistic director Gemma Bodinetz’s Twelfth Night, which gets off to an innovative start, lasts almost three and a half hours. Thank goodness the new seats are comfortable. Several passages, not least the goofing between Sir Toby Belch (Matthew Kelly) and the lighter people, need to be slashed.
The staging is broad and light, the theatre’s old brickwork, pine floor and high ceiling calling to mind a grand barn for the scenes in Orsino’s and later Olivia’s houses. Potted orchids descend to add a bucolic touch.

Singing on the stage: Matthew Kelly as Sir Toby Belch, Paul Duckworth as jester Feste and Adam Keast as Sir Toby's drinking friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek

When we first see Viola (Jodie McNee) her teeth are chattering from the shipwreck. Good touch.

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Review: This old pals' act is a riotous reunion DONKEYS' YEARS

DONKEYS' YEARS (Rose Theatre, Kingston-on-Thames)
Verdict: A tour de farce  
Rating:
There used to be a cricket writer, Alan Gibson, whose despatches invariably included a description of his calamitous train journey to the county ground from which he was reporting. I thought of Gibson on my way to see Michael Frayn’s ace 1976 farce Donkeys’ Years.
Farce preceded the farce. My head full of politics and cobwebs, I clambered aboard the wrong train, which then crawled at the pace of a slug. When I finally realised my error, it took a while to find a connecting train. That, too, made slow progress.
On reaching Kingston I found no taxis to speed me to the Rose Theatre, so had to run. I arrived with a stitch, bathed in sweat. And I had missed the start.

No matter! Director Lisa Spirling has come up with such a cracking production, I was laughing within a minute. What with my stitch, this hurt. It also brought on a threat of asthma.

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Review: THE HOTEL PLAYS

THE HOTEL PLAYS (Langham Hotel)

Verdict: Suite idea
Rating:

Three Tennessee Williams playlets, with all set in hotel rooms, are being performed at a central London hotel, the Langham (opposite the BBC).
This is a neat little effort. Each scene lasts less than half an hour and is staged in a  different bedroom suite.
The audience is limited to about 30 (it is surprising how many you can squeeze on to benches in a small room) but there are three ‘sittings’ a night.
Playwright Williams had a thing about hotels — he even died in one. Hotels capture a certain transient glamour, a suggestion of the flaky rendezvous. Yet intimate. Sitting in these rooms, watching actors play characters in their night clothes, one feels almost voyeuristic.
The Pink Bedroom features an adulterous couple having an argument. She (Helen George) is in a pink nightie. He (Gyuri Sarossy) has come from his bickering wife, only to find yet more grief. He becomes oppressed by the pinkness of the room. Does she want him to stay or is she playing emotional games?

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Strictly Come Dancing Live combines twangable thighs and ivory smiles for a night of spangly fun

STRICTLY COME DANCING LIVE (Wembley Arena and touring)
VERDICT: Cha-cha-charming!
Rating:

Sequinned hyperbole is the order of the night at Strictly Come Dancing’s road show.
From the blasting music to the judges’ scripted putdowns, from rugby player Ben Cohen’s biceps to knicker-model Abbey Clancy’s almost twangable inner thighs, everything is madly, merrily exaggerated.
The glitter ball hanging over the ballroom is bigger than a Nasa space pod. The singers who come prancing on are noisier and warblier — and fatter — than  Christmas turkeys.
They smack their palms together till the things must sting, such is their determination to agitate the crowd of crisp-munching family groups and hen parties.
Some audience members (ladies, refreshed) scream at the contestants, declaring undying love for beefy Ben or newsreader Susanna (Reid) and her bespectacled  partner, Kevin from Grimsby.
In the middle stands the compere — not Sir Bruce  Forsyth, who like the Queen’s older Rolls-Royces is nowadays reserved for state occasions, but bouncy, bubbly, cartoon-Mancunian chubby chops Lisa Riley. She is wearing a spangled housecoat like a cross between Norah Batty and Dame Edna.

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