Funny / Twelfth Night

• Any time Feste is on stage.
• Malvolio's visit to Olivia's court after receiving her letter.
  • Played up to eleven in the 2017 National Theatre Production where Tamsin Grieg (as the cross cast Malvolia) arrives and performs a striptease/burlesque musical number in yellow Basque and stockings.
• Malvolio's "exorcism" marks where Sir Toby Belch et al. take their joke too far, but still has some of the best lines in the play.
  Malvolio: Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady...
  Feste/"Sir Topas": Out, hyperbolical fiend! Talkest thou nothing but of ladies?
  • Especially the scene where Feste has an argument with "Sir Topas," switching back and forth between Topas's voice and his own.
• The scene where Malvolio finds "Olivia's" letter. Especially the bit where Malvolio realizes the letters spell his name. In some productions, the hidden Fabian, Toby and Andrew all break out into applause.
• Once Olivia lets Viola see her face, Viola chides her that she would be the cruelest woman alive if she went to the grave while leaving no copies of such beauty (i.e. kids) to the world. Olivia jokingly retorts that she'll leave an inventory of it in her will.
  Olivia: As item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth.
• Viola does a long speech that basically boils down to telling Olivia "not gonna happen." Olivia's response? "Yet come again!"
• One civic theatre production even made a funny bit out of "My brother he is in Elysium.": During the Viola/Captain scene, there were signs pointing left to "Shore," right to "Illyria"... and up to "Elysium."
• If a production's Wimp Fight between Viola and Andrew isn't hilarious, they're doing it wrong. Various stagings have shown it any number of ways, from hilariously awful swordwork, to Viola straight-up dropping her sword and running the hell away, to both Andrew and Viola forgoing swords all together in favor of a classic slap fight.
• Sir Toby mistaking Sebastian for Olivia is great with him doing a minor slap only for Sebastian to strike him down. "Are all the people mad?"
• Sebastian's reaction to this gorgeous noblewoman talking of him as a grand love and inviting him to her home can be wonderful. "What relish is this?" he whispers, going from confused to eager in moments.
  Olivia: Would thou be ruled by me?
  Sebastian: Madam...I will!
• When Olivia calls out "husband, stay!" to Viola, the best productions have her, Orsino and others of their party stop in place and do slow turns of "um...what?"
• Once Sebastian arrives on the scene during the climax and the remaining cast are confronted with the identical twins, companies are missing a huge opportunity if they don't play it for laughs. Reactions across various productions have included even Feste being totally confused, the priest making the sign of the cross, and of course Olivia's "Most wonderful!" line when faced with the prospect of TWO Cesarios!
  • A BBC production has Feste about to read a letter, sees each twin, does a double-take, pauses to mull it over, then shrugs and acts like nothing is wrong.
• Some productions have the idea of Feste reading Malvolio's letter and starting out in some sort of "crazy" talk from screaming to mumbling. When told to "read it in your right wits," he claims he's just channeling what Malvolio sounded like.
• Lots of productions like to get a laugh by having Orsino mistake Sebastian for Viola when proposing marriage.
• When reading the letter, Malvolio comes across the line, "If this fall into thy hand, revolve." Many productions have taken this literally, resulting in Malvolio either turning over the letter or even spinning in a circle, forcing Toby and the others to hide.

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