This little-known 1970 TV production of Shakespeare’s comedy is a real find. For you non-English majors, “Twelfth Night” is one of many of the Bard’s lighter works built around mistaken identity and gender confusion. This is basically a two-tracked story, one a rom-com involving a shipwrecked woman (Joan Plowright), pretending to be a male (a eunuch, technically) and falling in love in the process; the other involves drunken noblemen Toby Belch (Ralph Richardson) playing a cruel practical joke on Malvolio (Alec Guinness), a puritanical buzz-kill of a head servant. Helping Sir Toby along are various miscreants, including Feste (Tommy Steele) — a sort of clown or jester.
This somewhat shortened, fast moving production zips along joyfully, and the joy is largely thanks to its amazing cast. Dame Plowright, still a familiar face to PBS and BBC-America viewers and best known as the last wife of Laurence Olivier, gives a sensitive and funny performance in the lead — actually a kind of triple role. Alec “Please Don’t Call Me Obi-Wan” Guinness, one of history’s best and most understated actors, cuts loose and steals the show in one of the broadest performances of his career. He’s not quite Sir Alec, but it’s nevertheless Tommy Steele — a strong performer who began his career as England’s answer to Elvis Presley, or perhaps Bobby Darin — who gives this production a slightly off kilter late sixties edge, providing a contemporary, not-quite hippiesh, spin to his puckish character by performing folk-pop settings of Shakespeare’s songs. Steele gets the musical last word here, and it’s very nice.
