Trevor Nunn and his Adaptation of “Twelfth Night”
Twelfth Night is a classic Shakespeare play that has been turned into a big screen film by English theatre director, Trevor Nunn. Nunn is a very accomplished director, experiencing the differences directing many different plays, films, opera, and television. Twelfth Night is not the first Shakespeare play he has worked on. He started his career off by joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964 and was appointed the artistic director in 1968, which he held until 1986. Nunn led the creation of many different Shakespeare plays such as the 1974 production of Antony and Cleopatra, 1976 production of Macbeth, the 1976 musical adaptation of Comedy of Errors. Trevor was also successful outside of Shakespeare’s plays, for example, his appearances on Broadway directing some of the most successful Broadway shows, Cats and Les Misérables. His success continued to where he became artistic director of the royal national theatre from 1997–2003. Imogen Stubbs, the actor for Viola in Twelfth Night is Trevor Nunn’s wife and appears in quite a few of Nunn’s shows such as Nunn’s modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 2004.
6 min readOct 8, 2018
Synopsis
Twelfth Night is a film set in 1600 where a ship washes up on the coast of the island, Illyria, carrying twins Viola and Sebastian. Viola washes ashore, thinking her brother is dead and Sebastian is saved by Antonio, he also thinks that his sister is dead. Viola hears that she is not far from the house of Olivia. Olivia now lives with her maid Maria and her uncle Sir Toby Belch. Olivia has stated that due to the death of her brother whom she loved dearly, that she will mourn for seven years, and is rejecting the advances of Orsino, Duke of Illyria. Viola dresses up as a boy and goes to live with Orsino to serve for him. She ends up being Orsino’s personal “wooer” as Orsino is trying to get closer to Olivia. Although as the time goes by, both Orsino and Olivia begin to catch feelings for Viola. Sir Toby pushes Sir Andrew to try to woo Olivia as the two plus Maria are plotting their revenge against Malvolio. Matters are further complicated when Sebastian emerges from the sea and is saved by Antonio. Sebastian is mistaken for Viola and when the beauty of Olivia asks for his hand in marriage he accepts. This causes great confusion with Viola and Sebastian’s conflicting actions and words. All ends up resolved when Viola and Sebastian finally meet again, and everybody ends up marrying.
Twelfth Night; Comedy or Tragedy
The story of Twelfth Night is a disputed case when it comes to its genre, with many people saying it is a Romantic Comedy and others saying that it is a tragic film. Shakespeare’s creations are divided into three classifications; comedy, tragedy, and histories. Many of the historical plays are about kings, usually with the name Henry or Richard but some of his most famous plays come from the other two categories like the tragic stories of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet as well as the comedic stories of the likes of The Merchant of Venice, The Comedy of Errors and Much Ado About Nothing to name a few. Twelfth Night, on the other hand, has been disputed on whether it is a comedy or tragedy. On the outside, it looks like a funny story about the awkward love triangle between a duke, noblewoman and a crossdresser but if you look deeper it is a story about death and the struggles of loving someone that doesn’t love you back, two of the biggest causes of depression. 3 of the 4 main characters are dealing with a very recent death of someone very close to them. Another 3 of the 4 are dealing with loving someone that doesn’t love you back, that turns to 4 if you think about Sir Andrew constantly being turned down. Although these themes are there, there are low-key and the constant use of comedy throughout the play whether that blunt or whether it be double meanings and innuendos, it is safe to say that Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s comedies.
Adaptations in Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night is a famous piece written by Shakespeare, but it was not written for the big screen. It was initially written as a play which means that for it to become a good film it must be adapted. As it has been done with many plays turned films, Trevor Nunn has changed the script of this film, so it can be easily understandable and work in well with the rest of the film. Some directors when doing this to plays tend to stray away from the original script more than others and doing this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Trevor Nunn stays close to Shakespeare’s original script, but he does differ from the script a little. One reason why it necessary to change the script is because when changing from play to film, is that you are opening up to a different audience and an audience that may or may not understand the language used by Shakespeare and Shakespeare is one to use a lot of jokes that aren’t easy to pick up, especially if you don’t understand the English used very well. This means that parts of the script must make it super obvious to what is happening. One other way that film is adapted is using the images that can be created. An example of this is the camera angles that can be used to enhance the feelings and emotions in the situation with things such as close-ups and other different camera angles, also helping people understand the situation, like in the example below of when the twins reunite, realising that the other is not actually dead. This makes it much easier to see the emotion in the faces of the two characters.
