SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Manchester Guardian, August 23, 1974, p. 12.

Peter Gill made his name as a director with his meticulously realistic productions of D. H. Lawrence; yet paradoxically his Stratford production of Twelfth Night (his first for the RSC) seems curiously short on social and human detail. It is intelligent, well spoken and boasts a superlative Malvolio in Nicol Williamson; but at the moment it looks more like an X-ray plate of the play than the living article itself.

The dominant image is of a nonethereal bisexuality. William Dudley's plain box set confronts us throughout with a sketch of an ambisextrous Narcissus figure gazing into a pool; and there is nothing at all equivocal about the physical relationships. Orsino hugs Cesario to his breast with rapturous abandon: Antonio is plainly Sebastian's longtime boy friend: and Viola all but tears her hair in anguish at Olivia's unfulfilled...