First things first: this is not a cross-cast or gender-blind production. If it were, Tamsin Greig would be playing the sourpuss steward as Malvolio not Malvolia, Imogen Doel a prankster sidekick as Fabian not Fabia and Doon MacKichan a male Feste the fool. On the contrary, feminising these characters – having Malvolia enter in a puritanical black outfit  with matching dominatrix bob hairstyle (a wig which she tears off on her final line of the play), having her stand by the sleeping Olivia’s bed clearly besotted with her mistress – takes pretty much every opportunity to foreground the dimension of gender and its assorted upsets. Director Simon Godwin even adds an extra scene in the Elephant, in the play a tavern barely mentioned but here a nightclub presided over by a clone of 1970s disco icon Sylvester; instead of “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, s/he sings “To be or not to be”.

In fact, I should not have said “upsets”, but spoken rather of simple permutations. A conservative view of the play (even of this play, centring on a woman – played by Tamara Lawrance – who disguises herself as a boy and falls in love with her master, whilst a neighbouring noblewoman falls in turn for her/”him”) will find much here to dissatisfy. However, Godwin’s revival is very much a production for our times. Even ten years ago, it would have been awkwardly radical to stage a production whose homosexual relationships took place explicitly in a world where same-sex marriage was an ordinary fixture. Here, the most jarring note is that mixed-sex duels are likewise a social feature.

Greig is of course a master/mistress of her po-faced comedy, glaring reprovingly at us when we giggle at the schoolboy joke in the letter scene about how Olivia writes “her C’s, her U’s 'n' her T’s”. Tim McMullan is an un-rotund Toby Belch, naturally given to roistering but also up for a genuine brawl when required, repeatedly swindling Daniel Rigby as Andrew Aguecheek in a pink check suit and a manbun, who inadvertently performs the splits when the stage revolve of Soutra Gilmour’s step-pyramid set gets into gear. As Duke Orsino, Oliver Chris hits exactly the right (and characteristic) note of lovable twerp. The sense of sexual topsy-turvy as such may be paradoxically eradicated by all the polymorphousness, but the core of festive comedy remains deliciously in place.

Written for the Financial Times.