I, Malvolio

‘Is this the kind of thing you like?’ Malvolio asks the audience. ‘Is this the kind of thing you get up to?’

Throughout this hilarious and masterful performance, British performer Tim Crouch uses Shakespeare’s ‘notoriously wronged’ and painfully pompous Twelfth Night steward to turn our attention back on ourselves and our enjoyment of others’ suffering. It is essentially a Bouffon clown show in which Malvolio opens himself up to ridicule and then abuses the audience for their cruelty in laughing. If it sounds painful that’s because it is, but it is also extremely funny.

This kind of work requires a masterful touch and Crouch certainly posses that. How else could he get away with inviting a seven-year-old girl on stage to help him hang himself? He is ever mindful of the audience, freely bantering, derailing himself and getting back on track and slowly introducing us to the cast of characters sitting beside us – Plaited Beard Man, Pirate King, Haughty Girl and Strange Foreign Woman. Crouch balances the many layers of the show – the entertainment, the themes, commentary on Shakespeare’s play, the responsibility of the audience – while remaining dedicated to the liveness of the performance. The relentless focus on the audience’s complicity with the cruelty of the fiction is reminiscent of contemporary performance makers such as Forced Entertainment but this is coming from a much older tradition of fools and buffoons.

Perhaps the weakest layer in the show is the recounting of the plot. Crouch’s shows are, in their inception, for school audiences, and it feels at times as though getting through the story is something that just has to be done despite it getting in the way of the real heart of this performance. We care much less about Malvolio’s relationship with the abusive Sir Toby Belch than we do about our own relationship with our charmingly abusive host. Shakespeare serves Crouch best when Malvolio is able to rage about the idiocy of the plot in which he is enmeshed and madness of the people he is judged by.

The theme of madness is a strong one here. Malvolio is really the most interesting and complex character in Twelfth Night, a man driven to the brink of madness by ‘pranksters’ out to make him look mad. Bullying, and the prank gone too far, will resonate for a youth audience and pointing out our implicit consent as witnesses of violence is highly relevant, but for me it is Crouch’s rendering of Malvolio that strikes home most forcefully. Here is a man who is both cowardly and strong, odious yet endearing, petty and vicious but still deserving of compassion.

I, Malvolio is a complex beast that’s both delightful and hard to watch. Malvolio puts it best as he is bent over and instructing a young boy dragged out of the audience to kick him. ‘Give a proper kick,’ he says. ‘Try to hit that sweet spot between comedy and pain.’ I, Malvolio certainly does.

Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5

Photo by Bruce Dalzell Atherton