‘Bleak Charm’: How Judi Dench and a host of stars fell under the spell of the greatest comedy in history | stage

MAll of us descend into dementia. The actors slip into their tales. Two of the best programs in the somewhat barren Christmas TV schedules featured Judi Dench poignantly recalling her love of Shakespeare. The great lady is also one of the glamorous ensemble in The Twelfth Night Reunion, a one-off event conceived and hosted by Giles Brandreth and recorded at the Orange Tree in Richmond, London, a year ago, in which a group of actors share their memories of the play.

Now available on YouTube, it’s like an upscale version of The Graham Norton Show with a couple of poignant moments.

The format is simple. Each actor is invited to describe their first encounter with the play and their experience of being in it. Simon Callow vividly remembers the “bleak charm” of John Barton’s legendary 1969 RSC production. When Callow played the drunken Sir Toby in a later National Theater production, Callow revealed that he discovered “that the character was basically my father”. Lady Judy, Viola in Barton’s version, describes a famous part of the comedies created by Donald Sinden’s Malvolio. In the garden scene, Sinden looks at the sundial and then at his watch and realizes that the two show different times. After looking at the sun, Sinden raised the sundial to a new position until it showed Malvolio’s correct time.

Stephen Fry’s Malvolio at Shakespeare’s Globe, in the West End and on Broadway, rightly pays tribute to the play’s impeccable structure and the unearthly skill of Mark Rylance in the role of Olivia. But Fry also reveals that he and Rylance had a heated argument about composing plays, and says that although Rylance claims to maintain an open mind, “his mind was so open that his mind left him.” However, even Fry admitted that he found the scene in which Malvolio is imprisoned impossible to learn and Ian McKellen later told him that every actor had the same problem and that Donald Wolfett concluded that Shakespeare could not have written it.

What stands out is everyone’s passion for the play and their joy in being in it. Tam Williams, who plays Viola in the all-male production of Propeller, says it’s like “the Liverpool football team of the 1970s” where everyone has to be at the top of their game. Penelope Wilton describes how, when playing Maria, she confronted the gruff Sir Toby by adopting an increasingly upper-class accent until she sounded “like a Radio 3 presenter”.

But although the film is full of fun, including one of the best Olivier stories I’ve ever heard from Robert Lindsay, it’s only in the end that it touches the heart. The first moment comes when Judi Dench performs her monologue as Viola realizes that Olivia has fallen in love with her. You could turn this speech into comedy, but there’s an intensity of sadness to Lady Judy – especially on the line “What inconsolable sighs will poor Olivia breathe!” – This makes you realize Viola’s sympathy for another victim of passion.

The second poignant moment comes when Stefan Bednarczyk, who was the pianist in “Twelfth Night of the Orange Tree” in 2024, brings the cast and audience together in singing the last few lines of the play: “A long ago ago the world began / With the wind and the rain / But that’s it, our play is over / And we’ll strive to please you every day.” Maybe it’s because it evokes the transience of mortal things, but those simple lines make for the perfect ending to the greatest comedy ever written.