SOURCE: "A Wrangle for a Ring," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4179, May 6, 1983, p. 459.

John Caird's production of Twelfth Night opens in an atmosphere of brooding impasse. Torpid thunder rumbles intermittently, achieving downpour only at the play's end—cued by Feste's "The rain it raineth every day". A sapless tree of wrinkled polystyrene overhangs the stage. Barren rascals and dry fools roister and languish beneath it, or climb its leafless branches. It dominates both the action and the programme notes. Evidently it symbolizes the fruitless love-quests in the play, where Aguecheek loves Olivia who loves Viola/Cesario who loves Orsino who loves Olivia—a neat little one-way system of Cupid's arrows, designed to keep characters and audience going round in circles. Only time can release us from the irrational directives of the heart: "What else may hap to time I will commit", says Viola towards the end of...