Adrian falls foolishly in love with young one Kara

ANOTHeR fine piece of Downton-ish nostalgia at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Following his edwardian productions of Much Ado About Nothing and Love’s Labours Lost, director Christopher Luscombe returns with a Twelfth Night starring Kara Tointon (right) and Adrian edmondson ( left) that suggests Shakespeare may have been a frustrated Victorian. even his outre ‘hey nonny-no’ folk songs are rendered as jaunty music hall numbers. Ms Tointon is lady of the manor Olivia whose listless languor mourning a dead brother turns to breathy pining like Celia Johnson in Brief encounter when confronted with Dinita Gohil as the shipwrecked Viola whom she takes to be a man.

But former Young Ones wildman edmondson steals the show as Olivia’s puritan butler Malvolio, who turns into a prancing minstrel when tricked into thinking Tointon loves him. And edmondson proves more than a clown with a display of sullen pathos once

exposed. The play’s big joke is that Malvolio wears yellow stockings ‘cross gartered’ — a style Olivia abhors. The gag’s been lost on audiences for about 400 years, but Luscombe makes a terrific comic set piece of Malvolio’s deception in the formal gardens of the Victorian manor as the pranksters hide behind statues.

Chief among these, John Hodgkinson’s boozy Sir Toby Belch is affably boorish and Michael Cochrane is a no less bibulous old stick in Argyll socks and country tweeds.

Luscombe’s deliciously louche production offers more japery than melancholy, and almost sneaks in social commentary by casting three Indian actors wearing sumptuous silks to invoke Victoria’s glorious Empire on which the sun never set. Gohil is a plucky sparrow as Viola, Esh Alladi makes a lusty brother and Beruce Khan as Olivia’s fool, Feste, is an amusingly scathing knave.

The cornerstone is, however, Simon Higlett’s set which seduces the eye with the rich Moroccan colours of the Arts and Crafts movement steeped in sepia light.

It’s a visual feast alternating between the inglenook fireplace of Olivia’s oak panelled hall, the mossy iron work and glazing of her summer house and the parping steam trains of the nascent Underground in London. Awash with spectacle and fastidious detail, it’s surely another seasonal hit for the RSC.