SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Evening Standard, May 26,1994. Reprinted in London Theatre Record, Vol. XIV, No. 11, May 21-June 3, 1994, p. 695.

Although Twelfth Night is Shakespeare's most sexually subversive and ambivalent comedy, most modern directors steer clear of its erotic potential. So it proves in Ian Judge's jovial new production, which plays the broad comedy to the hilt, with picturesque flourishes. The romantic and sexual aspects drift discreetly into the shade.

Not surprisingly then, Judge seizes upon Malvolio, impersonated with dazzling comic buoyancy by Desmond Barrit. The puffed-up Welsh puritan due for his come-uppance is the production's chief example of the self-deceiving and self-unaware.

But the prime sexual business happens elsewhere in the play. Duke Orsino and the Countess Olivia both fall in love at first or second sight with a youth, or rather with Viola, who convincingly passes herself off as male. The aristocrats' wooing ought be...