SOURCE: "Illyria Follies," in Punch, Vol. 276, No. 7236, June, 20, 1979, pp. 1093.

Short of making it into a musical, which amazingly seems never to have been tried, there's not a lot that even the most wilful or determined of directors can do with Twelfth Night. Unusually, almost alone among the later comedies, it defies any kind of social or political or historical comment and therefore is inclined to become an actors' rather than a producer's play.

Having already staged it to considerable acclaim at the Comedie Francaise, with his wife as Viola, Terry Hands now brings to a new RSC production at Stratford the same designer (John Napier) but a homegrown cast and, from all Parisian accounts, a somewhat broader interpretation. We start off in a wild and wintry wood, as though the play were actually set on Twelfth Night rather than merely written for it; enter thereto a curiously irate...