Abstract
In September 2018, President Emmanuel Macron told an unemployed gardener that if he wanted a job, all he had to do was cross the street to find one at, say, a café or a restaurant. The comment was much mocked in the French media at the time. However, I’m aware of it not because I follow French media, but because Sir Andrew Gueule de Fièvre (Aguecheek) and Sir Toby Haut LeCœur (Belch) told me. The two knights (played, respectively, by Christophe Montenez and Laurent Stocker) had entered stumbling and mumbling lines closely translated from the original text: ‘aller au lit après minuit, c’est aller au lit de bonne heure’. (All French quotations are provided via correspondence by the production dramaturge.)
They then carried a pair of microphones to the edge of the stage and delivered several minutes of stand-up comedy, including the anecdote above, to which the audience responded with loud laughter and applause. This was the beginning of one of the more astonishing sequences in Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation of Twelfth Night.
The successful comic set was followed by an even more surprising staging of the songs in the script. The men took turns sauntering down the long platform protruding into the audience, like models on a catwalk. Toby’s gyrating struts and thrusts were certainly most suggestive, but Sir Andrew threw himself into a Bacchic frenzy that culminated in the literal manifestation of ‘Hold thy peace’ (2.3.62) – or rather piece, his genitals completely uncovered, and then remaining exposed, more or less, for the rest of the scene. Again, all this was received with raucous appreciation by the audience.
Ostermeier is known for his radical re-interpretations of classic texts, combining striking aesthetics with equally poignant social commentary. The scene described above was representative of this production as a whole, which vigorously explored the confusion and chaos caused by love and lust and imbalances of power. Rather than succumb to the temptation of the saccharine, as is too often the case with this play, Ostermeier embraced both bitter and sweet, blending dark humour, sharp political provocation, and emotional vulnerability. His approach was bold, given it was the first time he was directing at the Comédie-Française, but it created a more satisfying artistic and intellectual experience than more cautious, conventional renderings.
From the first moments of the performance, Ostermeier and designer Nina Wetzel’s mise en scène seemed calculated to unsettle an audience ready for a familiar, traditional comedy. The curtain rose to reveal actors wearing lifelike gorilla suits squatting in a sand-filled, white-walled set, accentuated by boulders and cardboard cutouts of palm trees. Immediately, we were compelled to view the story against a jarring backdrop of artifice and inhumanity – whatever we may have expected from the beginning of Twelfth Night, it cannot have been this.
When the human characters entered, that sense of disorientation intensified: no-one wore trousers. As more bare legs arrived, one had to wonder: why? This was not an illustration of separate social classes or genders: Orsino (Denis Podalydès) wore a fur-lined dressing gown, but his legs were just as nude as his servants’ and Olivia’s (Adeline d’Hermy). Even, eventually, the priest appeared just half clothed. I suspect Ostermeier and Wetzel’s intention was simultaneously to alienate and to draw attention to shared human attributes. Counterintuitively, rather than distinguish, as costumes usually do, the near-uniform exposure seemed to level the social/sexual playing field, as well as, again, heightening the sense of the bizarre and ridiculous.
In his programme note, Ostermeier emphasised the complicated way the play captures sexual fluidity. While infusing the narrative with hints of homosexual desire is hardly unusual and is certainly textually supported, never have I seen these characters more conflicted in their affections. For example, Viola/Césario’s (Georgia Scalliet) response to Olivia’s declared love is often only, as the text indicates, pitying. Here, however, while Viola/Césario was clearly devoted to Orsino, she gradually softened to Olivia’s earnest entreaties, reacting with growing feeling until in 3.4, the page shared a passionate kiss with the Comtesse, before exiting in tears and shaking her head. This sense of tension and confusion inflected each of the romantic relationships, and the complex counterpoint of attraction did not resolve in the final moments of the play. The two couples, plus the (so-called) pirate, stood in a line centre stage, in the following order: Viola, Orsino, Olivia, Sébastian, and Antonio. The couples embraced. Antonio, miserable, turned his face away, to the audience’s sympathetic amusement. However, the couples seemed dissatisfied, and the two in the middle slowly turned to each side, embracing the person there: Orsino and Olivia, Sébastian and Antonio. Given these were the pairings the participants had so desired at the beginning of their respective stories, their obvious lack of pleasure at this moment was poignant, and again they turned to switch partners: Olivia and Viola, Orsino and Sébastian. Still, no joy, and again the turn and switch: Viola and Sébastian, Orsino and Antonio. I have attended Twelfth Nights that have ended with suggestions of melancholy, but never to this level.
Yet more followed. Ostermeier cut Malvolio’s (Sébastien Pouderoux) discovery of the plot against him and his vow of vengeance. Instead, as the couples congregated uneasily, suddenly the white walls of the set were removed to reveal Malvolio standing on a stepladder, his neck in a noose. Wordlessly, he kicked the ladder away and hung, his limbs thrashing in appallingly realistic spasms. In a production full of startling and unsettling choices, this was the most disturbing. But it worked. Ostermeier had, by this point, subtly adjusted Malvolio’s character arc. He seemed awkward and socially inept, but not repulsive or cruel – goofy rather than grotesque and silly rather than severe. Bound and buried under gobs of human excrement in 4.2, he was further tortured by Sir Toby shoving a length of metal pipe into his backside, and the steward’s horrific suicide made him a grimly tragic figure. No hint of happy ending here.
However, not all was morbid, wildly experimental, or philosophically penetrating. There were lighter, yet no less artistically potent elements. It is worth mentioning the simple strength of Oliver Cadot’s marvellous translation of the play. For example, I had wondered how Cadot would convey Toby’s retort to Olivia’s accusation of lethargy – ‘Lechery? I defy lechery’ (1.5.110) – since the strictest translations for lechery – ‘luxure’ or ‘lubricité’ – sound nothing like ‘léthargie’. However, in a delightful matching of the phonetic and semantic, Cadot made Sir Toby protest, slurring ‘Les orgies! Je résiste aux orgies!’ Also, given the importance of music in the play, I would be remiss not to note Nils Ostendorf’s original compositions and arrangements of classical and contemporary scoring. Especially moving was the countertenor’s (Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian and Paul Figuier, alternating) exquisite singing of Monteverdi and Vivaldi, accompanied by the lute-like théorbe (Clément Latour and Damien Pouvreau, alternating) and occasionally Feste (Stéphane Varupenne) on guitar or trombone.
Still, what resonated most were moments reminding me of the play’s contemporary relevance, of the significance and urgency of the ideas therein. As a last (and my favourite) example, Antonio heavily emphasised his lines about Sébastian’s sad journey: ‘being skilless in these parts, which to a stranger, / Unguided and unfriended, often prove / Rough and unhospitable’ (3.3.9–11). I understood this as an evocation of the ongoing immigration/refugee crisis in France (and everywhere) and an explicit call for compassion. Apparently, I was not alone. The lines raised murmurs from the audience, some applauding, while at least one hissed in derision, though I could not tell if it was directed against Antonio or against the direness of the circumstances he evoked. Either way, this moment, and others like it, ensured that the work of Ostermeier and company made more of an impact than many other Twelfth Nights I have attended.