Director, Andreas Georgiou, showed ambition and enthusiasm in this production throughout. Taking a blank canvas approach, he opted to set the play on a two third stage leaving space behind for unseen movement and manipulation. Throughout the production, key direction elements such as interpretation, continuous action, spatial consistency and visual variety were all apparent and consistent. The set was extremely simple and this worked well in minimizing transitions and keeping pace.

On the whole, the principals delivered with confident and consistent character portrayals, with nice variation and contrast between each character; evidently working hard to interpret the play and make the parts their own. Viola (Grace Maynard) gave an impeccable performance, which could not be faulted and Alex Hancock was commendable as Orsino.

Of particular note were the performances provided by the innuendo comedy duo, Sir Toby Belch (Bob Sage) and Sir Aguecheek (Tom Bright), who both played their roles extremely well.

Malvolio (Harry Harding) also delivered with a great recital and displayed some good characterisation throughout, and I was also impressed with the performance provided by Jaysica Marvell (Maria).

For me the truest performance of the evening was that of Feste (Barry Woolhead). The use of pause and pace of delivery was commendable and I enjoyed the characterization very much indeed. Congratulations.

With such a complicated linguistic style in comparison to today’s modern norm, diction, projection and all-round clarity of speech are integral to successfully communicating a Shakespearean play to an audience. I thought that as a whole, the entire cast delivered successfully with this and should be very proud of the standard achieved, although at times diction was lost amid the action and on occasion delivery was a little too fast.

On reflection, I thought that this was a very enjoyable production that was well produced.

Thank you once again for your generous hospitality.