nietie | Ben Mansfield in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" (Reply)

At the last minute Ben Mansfield (Captain Hilary Becker) wasn’t able to attend the SFX Weekender2 in Camber Sands (Sussex) on February 4 , so we, a bunch of Denialists, were deprived of meeting him in the flesh. L

He is in a Shakespeare play in the National Theatre in London (“Twelfth Night”) at the moment and I decided to try to get a day ticket. It is playing in the smallest theatre (the Cottesloe) and all performances were sold out immediately. But with a bit of luck one could try to get a day ticket. And I did!!

I didn’t wait at the stage entrance afterwards to get his autograph (bad fan girl, no biscuit! *g*), because I was flying back home very early the next day. But the play and Ben were fabulous!

I had a seat with restricted view on the second level. I looked directly onto the stage from the top; I wasn’t able to see directly below me, left of the stage, but the view wasn’t bad at all (not bad at all *bg*).

For anyone who doesn’t know the story of “Twelfth Night” by William Shakespeare: separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Duke of Illyria. Wooing a countess on his behalf, she is stunned to find herself the object of his beloved’s affections. With the arrival of Viola’s brother, and a trick played upon the countess’s steward, confusion reigns in this romantic comedy of mistaken identity.

The famous first line of the play is: “If music be the food of love, play on.”

This version of the play was directed by Peter Hall, marking his 80^th birthday. The cast consists of Simon Callow, James Clyde, Marton Csokas, Simon Paisley Day, Amanda Drew, Charles Edwards, Rebecca Hall, David Ryall, Finty Williams and others.

Ben Mansfield’s character (Sebastian) doesn’t have many scenes, but the scenes he has contain a lot of angst. *g*

He wears a red (!) costume, even red socks and shoes and has long hair. His voice is rather high (Becker’s voice, especially in th 4^th series, is very low IMO). Altogether, I think, to resemble his twin sister disguised as a boy at best. But nevertheless, he looked very yummy.

Below you find some pictures. They could have been posted on the LJ before (one of them was posted for sure by textualdeviance on primeval_denial).

His first scene is an angsty scene about the loss of his twin sister, who he presumes has drowned after the shipwreck. The man who had saved him (Antonio) is a very good friend now and my slashy heart beat faster with this almost homoerotic scene (and after reading the commentary in the book of the play I bought, I now know I wasn’t making this up!).

In a later scene he is almost strangled, followed by a sword fight (omnomnom) and when he finally realises his sister is still alive he even cries. Awww.

At last he is on stage in a long scene, but he doesn’t have any lines. He was standing at the perfect spot on stage, so I could look at him shamelessly (and not listening to what the other players were saying LOL).

And then I noticed he has a habit that must be Ben’s, because Becker does it too. He touches the tip of his nose, almost pinching it. I can’t recall any specific scenes in “Primeval”, but when he did it on stage a couple of times I thought: OMG, Becker does that too!

All in all I loved the play. The comedy elements were very well played. The man sitting next to me had seen a lot of versions of the play and wasn’t impressed by Feste, the jester (David Ryall). But I don’t have any comparison and had a memorable evening.