SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Financial Times, December 5, 1987, p. xvii.

There's no stopping Kenneth Branagh. No sooner has his face disappeared from our Sunday night television screens and The Fortunes of War than it reappears on the large screen in A Month in the Country. The West End is already enjoying his production of John Sessions in The Life of Napoleon, and now Branagh's bravely named Renaissance Theatre Company opens its first full-scale Shakespearian enterprise at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. A dankness has seeped up from the Thames; for this Twelfth Night is a chill affair, sober, respectful and curiously mirthless.

Branagh as director opens the play with Viola enquiring of the sea captain what country this is, from behind a gauze. The ensuing scene is decently spoken, if fitfully visible, and sets the tone for the rest of the production. When the curtain rises...