Twelfth Night

William Shakespeare

HER Productions

Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester

24 June - 5 July, 2026: 2 hours 40 minutes

(also at Heywood Civic 9-10 July and Lawrence Batley Huddersfield 14-15 July)

Hannah Ellis-Ryan as Viola and Jessica Mannion as Olivia in HER Productions' Twelfth Night. All pics: Kelsea Knox

This Twelfth Night is another example of HER Productions’ “Unseemly Shakespeare” series, but is rather different from Macbeth a year ago.

Of course it is: it’s a comedy, though still in their tradition of reimagining the Bard through an all-female and non-binary cast.

But co-directors Kayleigh Hawkins and Stuart Crowther seem to have gone for the sheer revelry implied in the play’s midwinter title as their inspiration, and it's done with unrelenting verve and excitement. The supportive press night audience greeted it throughout with whoops and guffaws.

In set designer Jen Holt Wright and costume designer Zoey Barnes’ concept, we seem to join an all-girls night out at the seaside. There are some small, turd-like evocations of sand and/or mud at the sides of the acting area, and a boardwalk down the middle, with three displays of beach-side paraphernalia (buckets and spades, lilos, rubber rings and plastic blow-up toys) which become useful for people to hide behind as things go on. There must be a karaoke bar there as well, because we get a pantomime-style barrage of songs throughout the show. Subtle it ain’t.

The girls are nearly all Mancs (with a few exceptions that don’t quite make sense; see below), loud and proud, and seem to have been told to dress in what they will. Beth Vyse (Corrie’s Bridget) as Sir Toby Belch, and Channique Sterling Brown (former Corrie character Dee Dee Bailey) as Feste, make sure of that and are well supported by Kassie Jay Ellis as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Maya Dhokia as Maria. Angela Heenan’s Orsino is out of the same box, though so broad I couldn’t always follow her.

For a presentation that’s gender-bending by definition, there’s surprisingly little innuendo (though what there is gets laughs), but the fundamental plot device of beginning with Viola cross-dressing as a boy (“Caesario”) and becoming the page of Duke Orsino, the better to help him present his suit to recently widowed Countess Olivia, has to be more than just girl-acting-a-male-role. For this we have HER Productions’ own (and producer of the show) Hannah Ellis-Ryan, in a virtuoso performance: you can tell she’s pretending all the time.

She’s a Manc, too: what seems a little odd is that when her twin brother Sebastian arrives on the scene (and is thoroughly confused with “Caesario”), Lucie Browne gives him a pronounced Estuary accent, despite the text’s insistence that to Orsino they speak with “one voice” as well as appearing alike. Another gag? Maybe.

Jessica Mannion’s Olivia is an interesting one: after the ashes-scattering in which we first see her, she brightens up pretty quickly for a woman in mourning, but there’s something of lovelorn reality there, and a feisty side to her too.

And Frankie Gold’s Malvolio is a gem: based on a Miranda Hart model perhaps, but none the worse for that, and very well done. And she can sing a cool C&W ditty. Channique Sterling Brown does an Elvis impersonation, to cheer up the imprisoned Malvolio, so there’s constant invention, lively business, quite a lot of ad-libbing and even a spot of audience participation. For laugh-a-minute Shakespeare, what’s not to like?

PS: Take something to wrap up warm with once you’re in the theatre at Hope Mill: their air conditioning is very effective.

More info and tickets here