Staging Shakespeare is always an ambitious undertaking: it requires cast and creatives to grapple with decoding meaning, deciding a vision, and delivering it effectively, amongst other challenges. While an all-BME cast and creative team is the norm for the Marlowe Society’s annual BME Shakespeare production, the extent to which aspects of racial and cultural identity beyond skin colour will feature remains open to its directors. And though Shakespearean ‘comedy’ is arguably more audience-friendly than ‘tragedy’: true recentring means re-spoking the wheel of comedy so it confronts or even outdoes the longstanding white western history of humour at the expense of racial and cultural minorities. In short, it’s a tall order. Since Twelfth Night is relatively well-known, I’ll skip summarising and instead focus on what struck me while watching this production.

Like the sound of the shipwreck that this production subjects its audience to, the play’s lukewarm opening appears to abandon its own ship pre-sail. The storm soundscape is bereft of sonic grandeur but loud enough to undercut the effect of the silent mime with which it introduces some of the characters. The opening creates a confused vacillation between eerie calm and epic storm. This same sense of subdual mars Yasmin Jafri’s otherwise decent portrayal of Cesario. Though Viola’s disguise as Cesario arguably warrants such caution, this affective stiffness makes her supposed chemistry with Olivia unconvincing, prompting the audience to seek emotional investment in other characters.

“The cast give solid performances full of masterful moments too numerous to name”

The raucous entrance of Maria (India Thornhill) and Sir Toby (Jamie Chen) — along with Sir Andrew (Phoebe Deller) — is what rescues the play’s messy opening. Chen and Deller share excellent chemistry, managing to find depth and keep delivery fresh, even within the confines of comic relief. Indeed, their energy anchors the entire cast — especially, but not only the ensemble characters — for the first half of the show. Overall, the cast give solid performances (many masterful moments, too numerous to name), save for the odd mishap or rushed monologue delivery — both likely due to first-night nerves.

The show (mostly) makes good and humorous use of modern cultural references. There were moments where actors delivered lines in ways that made these characters their own, especially Olivia (Olivia Khattar), and Malvolio (Ebenezer Boakye). Boakye’s stage presence is strong from the outset, memorable even amidst the shaky opening scene. This production teases the possibility of centring Malvolio during the speech where he reads Maria’s letter, but mercilessly abandons its poignant potential after his imprisonment, just as the audience becomes emotionally invested in his main character energy.

“I found myself grimacing each time Indian classical instrumental music played under declarations of love.”

The production’s sparse set is highly effective, enabling smooth well-lit scene transitions, and crucially, its minimalism spotlights the cast. Wall portraits of James Baldwin, Daniel Kaluuya, and Riz Ahmed — among other non-white cultural icons — are a nice visual touch that nods to a collective (‘one big BME family’) while acknowledging individuality, even evoking real-world cultural legacies and values. Costumes appear to be largely western and use muted colours, save for some tentative references to West Africa (Malvolio’s dashiki) and South Asia (Viola’s kurti at the start). And while I recognise this somewhat subverts the white conception of non-western clothing and cultures as ‘colourful’, the non-western smattering strikes me as perfunctory. I found myself grimacing each time Indian classical instrumental music coupled with ‘ethereal’ lighting played under declarations of love. At best, it signifies exoticism and at worst, perpetuates stereotypes of India as ‘otherworldly’ and ‘mysterious’ which are rooted in whiteness.

Intriguingly, a BME cast imbues certain moments with racial undertones or evokes real-world parallels, albeit inadvertently. For instance, Olivia’s question “What is your parentage?” seems motivated by class concern, but it brought to my mind being asked the seemingly innocuous question of where I’m really from. Similarly, Sir Andrew’s quip about “vinegar and pepper” in a “saucy” (sexually suggestive) letter nods to the meme of bland, unseasoned “white people food”. Given the persistent salience of colourism within Black and South Asian communities, the recurring references to fairness and complexion and the racial-gender dynamics of Olivia/Sebastian and Orsino/Viola represented a missed opportunity to explore colourism and feminine beauty standards through comedy. But maybe that’s too much to ask, given the time constraints and (possible) emotional demands.

Oh, one more thing: some (white) folk sat around me were whispering to one another and rattling ice cubes in their glasses throughout the entire show — nothing malicious, but irritatingly persistent. And yet, this innocuity is tragic, and ironic (I was meant to be watching ‘comedy’, after all): it re-confirms the inescapability of whiteness already apparent to me in the show’s instances of othering, even in the ‘non-white’ theatre space: the stage of an all-BME production. I’m reluctant to suggest restrictions like a Black Out because this implies that white people need not think about issues like BME representation and whiteness. But it’s definitely food for thought.

Both consciously and unconsciously, this production of Twelfth Night is provoking, but stops short of articulating the insights provoked, or exploring their implications for racial and cultural identity. To adopt Malvolio’s terms: though not born great, there are moments where it is on the cusp of achieving greatness. Those moments, along with the cast’s knack for comedy, make it well worth watching.

BME Shakespeare: Twelfth Night is playing at the ADC Theatre from Tuesday 28th February to Saturday 4th March, 7:45pm.