PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

the egg, Bath (5-8 Oct) and Bristol Old Vic (22-26 Nov, 2011)

THEATRE “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you!” promises writer/performer Tim Crouch’s dishevelled, excretion-stained Malvolio, with some justification it turns out, from centre stage.

Dressed in filthy, careworn bedclothes and sporting the yellow stockings and cross garters he was tricked into wearing by his merry tormentors from Shakespeare’s mistaken identity comedy ‘Twelfth Night’, Malvolio finally gets to air his take on events. Addressing the audience with pompous contempt, he lambasts our frivolous, inconsequential living and chastises us for laughing at his suffering. The sense of cruelty is heightened by the fact that a theatre, of course, is one of the last places Malvolio (“a kind of puritan”) would ever be seen in. Do we – as voyeurs – therefore have an active role in his misfortune?

This is the fourth in a series of Crouch’s one-man shows that allow a marginal character to speak their previously unheard story but more than ever – and much like Crouch’s previous show for adults ‘The Author’ – it enforces the audience into some lightly uncomfortable self-examination.

It’s a brilliant conceit that gives Crouch freedom to splice the most succulent Shakespearean into often comic modern day narration whilst (just about) finding room to retell the bones of ‘Twelfth Night’ for the uninitiated.

Malvolio’s story has always been laced with mean-spirited injustice and that’s portrayed magnificently here – only when a noose is dangled from the rafters do we, the audience, unlike Sir Toby Belch and co, finally say “no” to his repeated incantation “is this the kind of thing you find funny?”

Occasionally perhaps, Crouch too often plays it for laughs, especially for tonight’s predominantly adult audience, and especially when there is so much conflict, loneliness, pity and pathos already drenching the story of the inherently harmless, decent Malvolio, but the simplicity, execution and suitcase-sized staging makes this a thoroughly enjoyable hour of linguistically deft, morally probing theatrical inventiveness. Long may the series continue. (Joe Spurgeon)

Copyright Joe Spurgeon 2011

Pic: Matthew Andrews