Shakespeare 4 Kidz - S4K Twelfth Night - This is London, Sevenoaks Review Nov 2001

Twelfth Night is Shakespeare's pantomime play - at least that is one reading of it, and clearly one that Shakespeare 4 Kidz have chosen for their latest touring production.

The most obvious problem with the play, especially for children, is deciphering and then keeping up with who's who and who's in love with who.

Orsino loves Olivia. Olivia loves Viola. Viola is Cesario. And she has fallen in love with Orsino. And that is just for starters. Then there is the sub-plot - Malvolio is in love with Olivia and is tricked into thinking it is reciprocal, and so it goes on.

Ensuring children can follow every twist and turn of plot is something Shakespeare 4 Kidz does extremely well, and this production is no exception - even my twin six year olds could follow the goings on at any given moment.

Julian Chenery's clever reworking of the text, blending Elizabethan Shakespeare with modern language makes this possible but loses much more of the poetry than say, his wonderful musical version of Macbeth and makes the play seem silly.

The darker undertones and more complex issues are glossed over so that Malvolio's descent into momentary madness, sinister though it is, feels rather out of place. Tristan Carter's Count Orsino is played for laughs - vain, foppish, melodramatic and two dimensional. Amusing though this makes him, it seems highly improbable that Viola would have fallen in love with him. One's sympathies are entirely with Olivia.

That said, my children, along with the other young members of the audience loved it to bits, laughed uproariously and concluded that "Shakespeare was very good at writing plays for children". So, who am I to nit-pick?

Twelfth Night is on tour around the country until March 2002. Visit the Shakespeare 4 Kidz website for details at www.shakespeare4kidz.com or telephone 01883 723444.

LYDIA CONWAY

What they say about us:
S4K HAMLET: "I was one of 4 teachers and 8 parents who took 90 Y5 and Y6 children to see Hamlet at The Sands Centre, Carlisle today (21.9.07). We have seen previous plays by S4K and thought they were great however today's performance of Hamlet was superb and surpassed them all! The whole cast were excellent and the children were enthralled throughout. Many of our children will never experience anything like that except through school and your company told the story with clarity, skill and humour to give them a trip to remember. Many thanks and much appreciation."

What they say about us:

S4K HAMLET: "I was one of 4 teachers and 8 parents who took 90 Y5 and Y6 children to see Hamlet at The Sands Centre, Carlisle today (21.9.07). We have seen previous plays by S4K and thought they were great however today's performance of Hamlet was superb and surpassed them all! The whole cast were excellent and the children were enthralled throughout. Many of our children will never experience anything like that except through school and your company told the story with clarity, skill and humour to give them a trip to remember. Many thanks and much appreciation."