Twelfth Night

 Cast

Viola/Cesario – female cross dressing shipwreck survivor. Twin sister of…

Sebastian – given up for dead until he returns and cocks things RIGHT up.

Duke Orsino – Viola’s employer. Fancies….

Lady Olivia – who is either blind or sexually all over the shop and mistress of….

Malvolio – Servant of Lady O. Duped.

Shipwreck alert! Poor old Viola is very much in the sea without a pedalo but before she's got a chance to befriend any balls named Wilson or grow a beard she is rescued. She then inexplicably takes a leaf from Joan of Arc’s book and decides the best thing to do is pretend to be a man so gets herself up as a page called Cesario so she can serve Duke Orsino, in charge of the island she’s pitched up at.

The Duke fancies a bit of Lady Olivia. She meanwhile, has decided that all men are bastards, largely because they keep dying on her. He decides to use Viola/Cesario as the main tool for professing his love to Lady O. Because nothing says ‘I love you’ like ‘please chat to this transvestite’. This plan proves to be even more bung when the true reason for Olivia being off men is revealed as being that she is in fact a massive lesbo because she immediately fancies the cod piece off Viola. Meanwhile Viola has only gone and fallen in love with the bloody Duke which is a bit of a bummer as he thinks she’s a man which has put the kybosh on flirting.

This next part is all a bit Benny Hill and has absolutely nothing to do with the main part of the plot. A few of the other characters club together to try and make Malvolio believe that Lady Olivia wants to get matrimonial on his ass. They do this after Malvs tries to slap them with an ASBO after they repeatedly sing London’s Burning in a round outside the house in the small hours, which would hack anyone off to be fair.

They basically pull the old, ‘forge a letter from his boss’ routine, with hilarious consequences. He laps it up totally unsuspectingly as you would when your employer randomly asks you to behave like a turd because she loves you. She’s thinking, ‘who’s this tit?’ and tells his mates to sort him out whereupon they lock him up in a loony bin and play him repeats of Last of the Midsummer Wine until he eventually cracks, twigs on to the fact that he’s been had and is within an ace of being dealt a P45, gets shitty again and has to be pacified by a mate of the Duke.

Meanwhile twin brother Sebastian, who like Lord Flashheart is NOT dead, arrives on the scene. Olivia, who apparently really goes for the ‘recently shipwrecked’ look, marries him thinking he is his sister. He can’t believe his luck as he’s not had to put in any leg work at all and she’s apparently a demon in the four poster.

Then after a bit more palava and prefacing sentences with the word ‘ho’ the twins appear in front of both the Duke and Olivia which is a bit awks for everyone as the groat drops. No matter as the Duke and Viola get married anyway to a song with the 'heigh-ho' lyrics that later went on to inspire a Dwarf trade union.