Twelfth Night directed by Tim Supple

Tim Supple’s 2003 television movie ‘Twelfth Night’ provides a multi-cultural contemporary rendition of Shakespeare’s play on confused identities.

Supple places the lead characters Viola/Cesario (Parminder Nagra) and Sebastian (Ronny Jhutti) as refugees in an exotic Illyria (21st century London). He provides a back story in which the twins witness their mother being beaten and arrested during a military coup.

Duke Orsino is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Malvolio is played by Michael Maloney. Claire Price, who recently starred in the BBC series, Rebus, plays Olivia. Feste, played by Zubin Varla, is portrayed as a popstar favourite of Olivia’s household.

Useful Links

Tim Supple’s Twelfth Night at Wikipedia

Channel 4 provides a 64 page Word document full of educational activities with notes on curriculum relevance, synopsis, reading, staging and screening distinctives, notes on building film grammar, cutting text and editing film, sound, Feste and his songs, dramatic cruxes, study of comedy, comparing film versions, and a detailed examination of a scene. Notes are written by Jerome Monahan and educational consultant Peter Logue. The resource is linked with 28 video clips (Real Player format) from the film and available online.

Twelfth Night IMDB

Tim Supple IMDB

Tim Supple Bio at Intermusica

Nitin Sawhney (Composer)

Twelfth Night/Macbeth DVD

Available at Amazon.com, includes subtitles in Englis, links to educational material and liner notes by Tim Supple.

Twelfth Night DVD

Available via Channel 4 Store, includes a four-part documentary directed by John Butterworth, “21st Century Bard”, focusing on the language of film, the art of film, the business of film, the technology of film.