The Twelfth Night Reunion: Judi Dench and cast recall Shakespeare in Orange Tree special

The Twelfth Night Reunion, a one-off event conceived and hosted by Gyles Brandreth and recorded at the Orange Tree in Richmond, London a year ago, brings Judi Dench and a host of actors together to share memories of the play. Now available on YouTube, the programme is described as "like an upmarket version of The Graham Norton Show" with two heart-stopping moments.

The format invites each actor to describe their first encounter with Twelfth Night and their experience of being in it. Simon Callow recalls the "melancholy magic" of John Barton’s 1969 RSC production and says that, when later cast as the drunken Sir Toby at the National Theatre, he discovered "that the character was basically my father".

Dame Judi describes a piece of comic business invented by Donald Sinden involving a sundial and a fob watch. Stephen Fry pays tribute to the play’s "flawless structure" and to Mark Rylance’s skill as Olivia, and says he and Rylance had fierce arguments about the authorship of the plays, adding that, although Rylance "claims to keep an open mind, 'his mind is so open his brain has left him'".

Fry concedes he found the scene in which Malvolio is imprisoned impossible to learn and was later told by Ian McKellen that every actor has the same problem; Donald Wolfit, he says, concluded that Shakespeare could not possibly have written it.

Key Topics

Culture, Judi Dench, Twelfth Night, Orange Tree, Gyles Brandreth, Simon Callow