My return to Twelfth Night

Martin Jarvis, 81, was in Twelfth Night at school, 70 years ago. Now, after four appearances in the play, he’s finally directing it

Once more unto the breach

Iwas recently invited to direct Shakespeare’s bizarre comedy in America.

‘Oh no, not another Twelfth Night.’

I’ve acted in it four times already. Never got it right yet.

First time, at school, in 1953, performing in the classroom. As an 11-year-old, I was already a fan of Richmal Crompton’s William:

‘When I’m in a play, I like to have a lot to say, an’ a lot to do.’

Too right.

Like Master Brown, I was prepared to give the playwright a chance: ‘I wrote a play once,’ said William, ‘and people acted it. They all forgot their parts, but it was a jolly fine play all the same.’

I decided that both Williams were pretty wonderful.

I’d been entrusted with the part of Viola (who masquerades for reasons of survival as a boy). My role model clearly couldn’t be young Brown. Better, Violet Elizabeth Bott (‘I like boyth gameth.’)

My lisping heroine got a few grudging laughs from form 3B – but it didn’t, so Mr Etherington informed me, ring true.

Ten years later (1963): Manchester. First professional job: Twelfth Night. Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother. My example this time, weirdly, Bertie Wooster. Still keen on a laugh or two: ‘As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.’

Tinkety tonk.

I was in thrall to this blithe character and to the dazzling literacy of his creator. How did P G Wodehouse manage to invent a storyteller who hadn’t a clue about what was going on, while somehow the reader (or radio listener) did? Astounding.

Shakespeare, it seemed, had got there first, performing the same trick with befuddled Sebastian.

I’d been cast opposite the gifted Janet Suzman, who was to play my old role of Viola. Janet, no doubt appalled to be lumbered with such an unlikely twin, was five foot five. I was six foot. Discrepancy there, for a start.

Often the Sebastian actor wears a wig, in an attempt to resemble his twin sister. But it was deemed impossible for my thatch to be hidden satisfactorily under a Suzman-style wig. Janet would have to sport a clone of my hair. She generously accepted what looked like a cleaning mop.

Opening night. She was brilliant as Viola/Cesario. I far less so as her Woosterish twin.

The most moving moment in the play: when they’re finally confronted with each other, Sebastian turns and gasps, ‘I say! Do I stand there?’ (Well, probably not ‘I say’ – that would be Wodehouse.)

At once, a voice from a few rows back shouted out what both cast and audience had been thinking: ‘Bloody stupid!’

Laughter all round, on stage and off. It was left to Orsino, a trimly bewigged Patrick Stewart, to rescue the action, Jeeves-like, and get us all, straightfaced, to the curtain call.

Some years later, Peter Hall asked me to play Sir Andrew Aguecheek at the Playhouse Theatre, London, in 1991.

‘But not,’ Peter said, ‘as a vapid idiot.’ (Well, my Sebastian had rather answered to that description anyway.) ‘No, let’s go for belligerent quarreller, always looking for a fight.’

What? Not my idea of the wistful creature who has the immortal line ‘I was adored once, too.’

‘Count me in,’ I said.

Not easy. The theatre’s new owner, Jeffrey Archer, had apparently done a deal in which the only dressing rooms were beneath the stage. The cast had to crouch together in four small rooms.

Up above, I found that, despite Peter’s expert direction, Aguecheek as bovver boy was tricky to sustain. Particularly as he’s an affable clodpoll who runs a mile from any confrontation.

Problems continued. Shortly after we opened, our Malvolio, masterly Eric Porter, was absent for a month with a bad back. His understudy at first gave an impressive facsimile of Eric’s performance. Then, a change. Was he growing too big for his Illyrian boots?

Sir Toby Belch and I had initially been complimentary towards the valiant stand-in. But soon he began to suggest we modify our contributions to accommodate his developing interpretation of the overweening steward. He gave us notes. The atmosphere became chilly.

Eric’s eventual return was welcomed with some relief as his substitute retired – reluctantly, we thought – to the bench.

The island warmed up again.

Becoming increasingly familiar with the play, I had begun to feel that its genius lay in the setting itself – Illyria. Fantasy Island, where anything is possible. It seemed to make sense of the apparent illogicalities we had worried over.

I had chats now, in 2005, with the director of my next effort – this time, as Malvolio.

But subtlety couldn’t be a watchword here at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park (pictured). It was all about shouting into the nighttime.

Malvolio, thinking to himself and reading ‘the letter’ aloud in Olivia’s garden is a hard enough concept to convey in any theatre. Though, on opening night, I noted there were many more chortles than I had foreseen,

Brush up your Shakespeare: Martin Jarvis (right) as Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, 2005

as I strutted along, talking – er, bawling – to myself.

‘My God,’ I thought, ‘I’m finding more humour here than even Eric did.’

On the third booming guffaw, I turned, and – Ah! I was being followed by a stage-struck pigeon, toddling along behind me, getting all the laughs.

Sonic frustrations. Helicopters overhead. Rock concerts on either side.

‘We can’t be heard. Why can’t we have microphones?’

‘Sorry, we prefer the purity of the human voice.’

‘But we’re losing our voices with all this yelling.’

Belch, his voice virtually a croak by now, was permitted a mic pinned to his doublet. So every time I approached him, I leaned forward and, admittedly somewhat oddly, spoke into his chest. The purity of amplification.

I heard that, the following season, microphones were introduced.

And now, in 2022, Los Angeles – to tackle this elusive comedy for LA Theatre Works, whose productions are heard on radio across the United States.

‘And Mart’n, why don’t you play Sir Toby?’

‘Oh. Don’t mind if I do.’

‘It’ll save us a salary.’ (Fair enough – I was already being paid for directing.)

So can I now try to echo what could have been Shakespeare’s intentions?

His namesake might have approved. William Brown’s own Illyrian-style sanctuary, the Old Barn, could similarly become a scene of shipwreck, pirates, visitations, a place of magical entertainment.

Before, we’d always come back to the thought that, as actors and audience, we must suspend our disbelief. That these twins can’t, acceptably, look alike or, crucially, sound alike.

‘It just isn’t credible. And a female voice can’t be mistaken for a male voice. Or vice versa. Doesn’t work. It’s the play’s weakness.’

Or its strength? Fantasy Island. Where a kind of iambic enchantment hovers in the air when alien twins are rescued, separately, from the sea. Isn’t Will suggesting it’s the island itself – its eerie effect – that renders anything sustainable, logical, believable?

We didn’t quite understand that point in Manchester. Or at the Playhouse. Nor amidst the hurly-burly of Regent’s Park.

SIR TOBY: Is’t possible?

FABIAN: If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

Improbable? But now, on the airwaves, perhaps I’ll get it right. Radio. Ultimate medium of imagination. Where Crompton, Wodehouse and Shakespeare himself continue to entertain.

I can, almost, hear the voices of Viola and Violet Elizabeth, borne on some Illyrian breeze, addressing their separate heroes:

‘Oh, William. You are wonderful.’