It’s the last stop for Bell Shakespeare’s major touring production of 2023, a queered Twelfth Night that stitches together elements of Elizabethan practise and contemporary discussion of gender to playful – if initially confusing effect.

Here, Viola is played at first by Isabel Burton, but then the role is taken over by a male actor, Alfie Gledhill, who carries the role for the rest of the play as Viola’s alter ego Cesario, with whom Garth Holcombe’s lecherous Duke Orsino falls in love with. Burton, meanwhile, is playing Viola’s ‘male’ twin, Sebastian.

Are you still with me? There’s more. Malvolio – misanthropic steward to the Lady Olivia – is played by Jane Montgomery Griffith as a woman, Malvolia, who nurses a massive sex-same crush on her boss (who, meanwhile, is entranced by Cesario).

Alfie Gledhill and Garth Holcombe in Bell Shakespeare’s Tweflth Night. Photo © Brett Boardman

Funny and broadly physical, director Heather Fairbairn’s production is easy to immerse yourself in, though sticking with it through the show’s rocky second half proves more challenging than it should be. That said, after four months of touring, the comic elements of the story are...