JULIET Forster considers Twelfth Night to be Shakespeare’s funniest comedy: all the more reason for the Theatre Royal’s associate director to direct this spring’s repertory production in York.

“The farcical elements are so funny,” she says. “Malvolio in his yellow garters being brought down by his pomposity is funny; the theme of unrequited love is both funny and tragically awful; and then there are the larger-than-life characters, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

“But I think it’s because it’s so truthful that we recognise ourselves in it and that’s what interests me about it.”

Juliet has cast Danielle King in the centrifugal role of the cross-dressing Viola, who risks all once she is swept on to the shores of Illyria after a violent storm leaves her shipwrecked, separating her from her twin brother.

For Danielle, Viola is one of the dream roles.

“We’re exploring the fact that Viola has freedom from not belonging in that world: that freedom of disguise and not being from the Illyrian world yet becoming involved to the point of falling in love,” she says.

“We’ve also thought about how nearly she died in the storm and how that has energised her,” says Juliet.

“First of all, it’s about surviving the shipwreck and then surviving in this world where she chooses to take the risk of hiding who she really is,” says Danielle.

“She chooses to get involved because there’s very little alternative for her, as her own world has disappeared and her brother has died.”

Viola is a woman of action, albeit one disguised as a man. “Unlike her, the others endlessly talk about their feelings and it feels like they have been stuck in this world forever, and it’s a world that’s become faded, until Viola and her brother come into that world and shake it up,” says Juliet.

That world, especially the world of the joke-playing Sir Toby Belch, is one of lethargy, debauchery and cruelty, as Danielle notes. “I’ve been watching Sir Toby in rehearsal, thinking ‘Why are you doing this? Is it because you are bored?’. He has that arrogance of being bored with life and entertaining himself by playing with the lives of others,” she says.

“The play has that end-of-summer feeling and that sense of feasting stretching beyond when it should have done…” says Juliet.

Are Juliet and Danielle bringing an expressly female perspective to the play?

“Well, I’ve always liked Viola above every other Shakespeare character,” says the director.

“Sometimes Viola is treated too gently in productions: too sweet and innocent and letting things happen to her, but we’ve discovered that she’s much stronger than that,” says Danielle. “She’s much more passionate and in control. She’s the next stage on in the development of strong female characters.”

• Twelfth Night (or What You Will) will run at York Theatre Royal from April 25 to May 16. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk