SOURCE: "The Problems of Paternity," in The Sunday Times Review, July 12, 1987, p. 49.

In the main house at Stratford the Royal Shakespeare Company presents … Twelfth Night. Bill Alexander has chosen a specific Aegean setting, with mock-Mykonos architecture by Kit Surrey and superb costumes by Deirdre Clancy, which create a romantic but entirely consistent late 17th-century Greek world.

In spite of blazing white walls and blue sky, however, the initial atmosphere in Illyria is decidedly chilly, and only gradually do Alexander's intentions become clear. Thus the belligerently broad playing of Roger Allam's Sir Toby and the infinitely subtle silences of David Bradley's Ague-cheek are bright lights against a deliberate shadow, first cast by the pathos of Bruce Alexander's unaccompanied singing as Feste, a bitter clown, and then by the treatment of Malvolio.

Antony Sher, who has transformed himself into Simon Callow—or how Callow might look as a Greek majordomo...