Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Music always makes an appearance in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, but it’s rarely as hot as this. This joyous 1996 jazz musical, conceived by Sheldon Epps and with a book by Cheryl L West is — aptly for the genre — a mischievous riff on the original. Set in the Cotton Club in 1940s Harlem, it’s soaked in the gorgeous music of Duke Ellington. The show’s title picks up on the comedy’s famous opening line — “If music be the food of love, play on” — but it also hints at the approach, which is both a play on the play and an injunction to the pin-sharp band to keep that lush sound coming.Shakespeare’s plot wanders in and out of view, with the characters neatly reconfigured for the new setting. Here the moody, lovelorn Duke (Earl Gregory) is the club’s famous composer, and the source of his woe is his break-up with high-maintenance singer Lady Liv (KoKo Alexandra). The young woman to put a swing in both their steps is Viola (Tsemaye Bob-Egbe), a would-be songwriter who arrives, naturally, not by shipwreck, but by the “A” Train. Realising that to make it in a man’s world, she’s going to have to disguise herself as one of the lads, she slips into a new identity as the sharp-suited Vyman (Bob-Egbe is very funny as she practices her cool-cat swagger).It’s a lot of fun in Michael Buffong’s upbeat staging (a co-production between Talawa Theatre Company and multiple theatres around the UK), but there are some sharp edges and pools of depth here too. Shakespeare’s Illyria is always a mysterious place — part location, part state of mind — and so it is here with the club, roughly evoked by ULTZ’s simple set.We float through the characters’ moods, with Johanna Town’s lighting and Ellington’s great songs helping to shape the moment and speak for their feelings. One of the show’s loveliest scenes arrives at the end of the first half, when the Duke, Lady Viv, Viola and Rev (the overbearing club manager and equivalent of Malvolio, played by Cameron Bernard Jones) all deliver “Solitude”, together in harmony but isolated in lonely pools of light.Gregory, Alexandra and Bob-Egbe bring terrific voices and a delicious playfulness to their roles. There’s a great comic duet too from Lifford Shillingford as Sweets (the Toby Belch figure) and Llewellyn Jamal as the loose-limbed Jester (Feste in Shakespeare’s play), who, having messed up with their women, lament their situation in a booze-soaked “Rocks in My Bed”.The show doesn’t keep pace with the original for depth and subtlety — or cruelty — neither does it deal deeply with the race, class and gender politics of the age to which it is transplanted. But, buzzing with gleaming performances and Kenrick H20 Sandy’s sassy choreography, it’s a cracking night out.★★★★☆To February 22, lyric.co.uk
