If Ricky Gervais directed a production of Twelfth Night, it might have turned out a lot like Christabel Rose and Madeline Hammond’s rendering of Shakespeare’s comedy.

In the play, the puritanical steward Malvolio is tricked by Sir Toby (a drunkard), Sir Aguecheek, (an idiot), Maria (a bawd), and the Fool Feste (an enigma) into thinking his mistress, Olivia, has fallen for him. Meanwhile, when Viola is shipwrecked on Illyria, she dresses up as the male Cesario, enters the Duke Orsino’s court, and catches Olivia’s eye. Chaos and confusion ensue, but everyone ends up with the right partner in the end. Except Malvolio, of course.

Rosaline Hayes’ Viola/Cesario was edgy, knowing- even neurotic- but also endearing. However, her speech was sometimes so rapid it was nearly incomprehensible. Oliver Marsh played a deliciously obsequious Malvolio barbed with real menace. Annie Gilchrist as Maria delivered her lines in flawless estuary English and her stage presence was matched only by Jason Forbes, playing an imperious Orsino. Early in the play Feste slapped Maria’s bottom and Gilchrist waited a good two seconds before shrieking and jumping; I lamented that Carry On Illyria never made it to our screens.

Jeff Carpenter’s ukulele playing Feste was energetic, but he delivered Feste’s witty lines with an ironic glance to the audience, making for a strain of awkward comedy worthy of The Office. Shakespeare’s jokes are found funny in theatres up and down the country, and the directors’ decision to laugh at them rather than with them was a touch patronising.

Rose and Hammond did allow the actors to pause occasionally, as though they were grasping for the right word. This made the line delivery refreshingly natural- audiences are too frequently subjected to a relentless stream of lines terrorized by iambic pentameter. Furthermore, Malvolio blindfolded and unable to move, crushed into a wooden crate in the prison scene, was truly distressing.

Having said all this, the offbeat delivery and pausing was all too often difficult to distinguish from first night nerves.