Tim Crouch: I Malvolio

Tim Crouch: I Malvolio

Tim Crouch: I Malvolio

I Malvolio is the latest of four works by Tim Crouch that interrogate well-known plays by a certain Will Shakespeare, viewing the story from the perspective of a minor character (here, Malvolio, the much-mocked Steward ofTwelfth Night, would-be lover of Countess Olivia, and the butt of Sir Toby Belch’s cruel tricks).

This series of solo plays is aimed at young audiences – although there’s no evidence of that in the packed Traverse Theatre: a quick cast around the auditorium (easy to do as the house lights are kept on!) reveals that there is not one person under the age of majority present in the audience.

Which is no a criticism of the artist, nor of his producers, but there is a question here for the marketing team: surely it is good for a production to be viewed by its target audience, so even though this is an Edinburgh Fringe / British Council Showcase presentation, could we not have had some seats set aside for young people, so that there was some experience of viewing the piece in the company of those for whom it was written?

I know that this is rather a long introduction, but I feel it is key to a piece of work that we understand who the intended audience is, and how the piece relates to that audience – and having seen the show previously presented at the Brighton festival, I do feel strongly that the presence of the young people it was written for is crucial in a show in which (like all of Tim Crouch’s work) the audience involvement is core.

And so much of the text very cleverly meshes Shakespeare’s themes and Malvolio’s words into the sort of contemporary dichotomy that is of such interest to teenagers, and manifests in so many varied ways in their daily lives, at home and at school: the battles between an excessive Puritanical orderliness and repression of desires on the one side; and personal freedom, anarchy and slovenliness on the other. So at one point we have Malvolio, dressed in filthy longjohns and sporting a turkey wattle, spitting with ironic contempt: ‘I’ll just throw this piece of gum here, shall I? This piece of peel, this wrapper, this tiny little ring pull…’ And then a little later: ‘I’m just having FUN… I’ll just stay up all night and drink this and spill this and vomit this and abuse these and destroy that…’

And there’s a lovely moment, a bit lost on this adult audience, where Malvolio ruffles scruffy heads of hair, or tuts at scuffed shoes with the sort of headmasterly jibes we all recognise from our youth (‘Who allowed you to leave home dressed like that?’), then uses the standard schoolteacher wheeze: ‘Now, I’m going to go out. And when I come back in I expect everyone and everything to be exactly where I left it.’ Of course there is just polite silence when he exits – not a titter is heard, and no one moves. Oh how I wish I’d witnessed this scene when the show was premiered at a comprehensive secondary school in Brighton!

The scene that follows is a very clever exploration of mob rule and a play on the ‘real’ and the ‘pretend’, as Malvolio hooks up a noose to the rafters and coerces audience members into helping him to hang himself, egged on (or not) by the audience. Having failed to hang himself, Malvolio scrubs up and dons his Sunday best and treats us to a scathing resume of Twelfth Night’s plot (from his bitter perspective) – the story of cross-dressing girls, ‘peevish’ boys, lovelorn counts, and celibate widows who marry at the drop of a hat mocked and reviled: ‘And they say I am mad!’. In the end, he gets his revenge on the schoolyard bullies (us) by abandoning us… and without someone to bully and laugh at, where are we?

This is my third viewing of Tim Crouch’s I Malvolio and I discover more each time. On previous occasions, I’ve been wowed by Crouch’s wonderful way with his audience, and the lovely physical/visual clowning moments. (The mocking signs stuck on his back! The bared buttocks! The kerfuffle with the noose! The striptease moment with the gartered yellow stockings!) That stuff’s all as great as ever, but this time round, it was the exploration of the concerns of the adolescent child, and especially the clever casting of the audience as the bully– a kind of collective Toby Belch – that I enjoyed most; and the awareness of what a pertinent text this play is for a teenage audience, even if that audience was absent here. Perhaps it was their very absence that flagged up how crucial their concerns are to this play.

www.timcrouchtheatre.co.uk

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Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com