He cannot help but resort to one-liners and his trademark sneer, but as the jester-cum-baul singer, Feste, this is in keeping with the role. It is great to see him finally emerging from the shadow of his GGM co-hosts Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and Nina Wadia and indeed Ghir certainly has the talent to the better actor of them all. He can do comedy, he can do tragedy and he can do both at the same time with Shakespeare!

If William Shakespeare was reincarnated, I am certain that he would have come back as an Asian. Why else would his plays be so full of Bollywood characters? The murderous Memsahib (Lady Macbeth), the shrewish wife (Taming of the Shrew), the hapless star-crossed lovers (Romeo & Juliet), long-lost twins (Twelfth Night), the fools, the villains, the guilt (Hamlet) - Shakespeare's work is like the average, Technicolor song-and-dance movie from the film genre that started in Bombay. So transposing Illyria to India in this version of 'Twelfth Night' is not as ridiculous as it might at first appear.

Using an almost entirely Asian cast, delivering the most tongue-twisting of Shakespeare's lines in accented Hinglish (English with a (h)Indian accent), is not as crazy as it sounds either. Once you can suspend your disbelief to listen, 'Twelfth Night' is as entertaining as any Bollywood movie, and a classic one to boot.

Director Stephen Beresford should be applauded for taking Asian Theatre to a new level. We need more of Shakespeare's plays adapted with the Asian audience in mind. But "relocating a play can be a dangerous business," Beresford acknowledges. "People have fond memories of 'Twelfth Night'. They remember Malvolio, tricked into wearing yellow stockings and Feste, wickedly impersonating Sir Topas the curate". And, therein lies the weakness of this adaptation. 'Sir Topas' means little in the context of India. Had he been turned into a saffron-robed Swami or Guru, the Asian audience would have more readily understood the deception. After all, Shakespeare has deceptive clergy and India has its fair share of deceptive Swamis.

Similarly Sir Toby Belch, whom I have always imagined as a bellicose, gouty sort of miscreant, could perhaps have been better turned into a fat, drunken dhoti-wearing uncle rather than the somewhat priggish character that appears in this adaptation. Olivia as a veiled beauty and Sir Andrew Aguecheek as a rather prim and proper 'Englishman' are a nice touch. Paul Bazeley as Sir Andrew delivers a fine, comic performance and Shereen Martineau, an accomplished stage actress, is credible in the dual role of Viola and her male alter ego Cesario. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that both Bazeley and Martineau have performed in a lot of Shakespeare's plays.

The rest of the cast is a miserable "rag bag" of performers best suited to daytime TV soaps. Shiv Grewal as Sir Toby Belch is like an accountant on a drinking binge (i.e. sober), Neha Dubey as Olivia has not quite left her role as the vacuous cousin from 'Monsoon Wedding' - she delivers her lines as if on speed and helium combined! And Raza Jaffrey gives a most constipated performance as Olivia's noble lover, Count Orsino. Frankly I've seen more romance displayed by a mannequin. Harvey Virdi, a talented actress, is sadly miscast as the scheming wench Maria and Paul Battercharjee, as Olivia's Steward Malvolio, seems to be something out of 'An Officer & a Gentleman' and 'South Pacific' combined.

The contradictions and juxtaposition of old and new is by design. "Twelfth Night is a play of many contradictions and I wanted to find a world in which these could coexist, modern people in a modern setting, but living in a culture that's rooted in the past - mysterious, religious and magical," says Stephen Beresford. And India is indeed all of that. So it is a shame that the best performances are given by Ghir, Bazeley and Martineau - all actors whose CV's are steeped in traditional Shakespeare.

Musically too, I would have preferred a much edgier adaptation all round. Starting with one of the best lines in literature "If music be the food of love, play on," creates an expectation of mind-blowing music. Sara Dhillon's compositions are meant to be a mixture of Indian classical music, Hindi Pop music, spiritual songs and jazz, but I wondered if perhaps the classical raga style and traditional baul singing could have used to greater effect.

I am not a purist. I agree with Stephen Beresford that Shakespeare is ideally suited to India. After all, isn't every Bollywood movie essentially a re-working of 'Romeo & Juliet'? What I feel this adaptation fails to do is go far enough. It could have renamed the names, and re-shaped some of the characters and still have been delivered the lines in Elizabethan English. But if you like intelligent distraction from a daily diet of mind-numbing nonsense, then 'Twelfth Night' is worth seeing.

Reviewed by Lopa Patel (Sept 2004)

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