Twelfth Night at Maidment Theatre

Michael Hurst's scintillating production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night transports us to a sun-drenched beach in a world of music, drink, romance and madness - the perfect antidote for mid-winter blues.

The play's title refers to the Twelfth Night of Christmas but its spirit is closer to the pagans celebrating the winter solstice with a brief period of havoc and indulgence.

The festive spirit is personified in George Henare's exuberant portrayal of Sir Toby Belch, a mischievous Lord of Misrule who asserts the fundamental principle of the carnival by placing the appetites of the body above any cerebral concerns.

His drinking buddy, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, is portrayed as an upper-class twit in Peter McCauley's finely judged performance that recalls the extravagant silliness of Monty Python.

This partnership produces some wonderfully inventive clowning, but Henare adds another dimension by showing genuine outrage as he confronts any attempt to negate his non-stop partying.

His devotion to cake and ale brings him into conflict with the puritanical Mavolio, one of the play's most intriguing characters, played with great subtlety by Paul Barrett.

Malvolio first appears as a sycophantic social climber and we enjoy his humiliation at the hands of Sir Toby's merry pranksters. But harmless fun soon becomes sadistic bullying, and Barrett elicits our sympathy by enduring his suffering with stoic dignity.

Malvolio's chief tormentor is the fool, Feste, revealingly portrayed by Oliver Driver as a sophisticated lounge lizard. Driver shows great panache as a comedian and finds a melancholy tone with his Vegas-style crooning.

But although he has the audience eating out of his hand with his improvised banter, his embellishments detract from Feste's function as the only sane character in a mad world. Feste embodies the wisdom of the player inspiring us to embrace the freedom and fluidity that comes from role-playing.

The attraction of multiple selves is most apparent in Viola, an enchanting character whose dual identity supplies the platform for everything the play has to say about love.

Viola is required to enact a wildly implausible storyline, but Tandi Wright's performance is so engaging that we forget the absurdities of the plot and focus on the emotional truths that underlie the madness.

The delicate interactions between Viola and Olivia produce some wonderfully poignant moments, notably when Jennifer Ward-Lealand's magisterial Countess dissolves into a lovestruck teenager as she is captivated by the overpowering sweetness of Viola.

The play ends with an unmasking of disguise and the stabilising of identity, but it is difficult to see this return to normality as a happy ending. The mundane world of reality, where the rain it raineth every day, is a poor substitute for the joyous mayhem in this superb production.