Q&A: EDINBURGH 2024: David Aldred on TWELFTH NIGHT FEVER

BWW caught up with David Aldred about bringing Twelfth Night Fever to the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

How did you first get involved in the world of theatre?

I’ve been involved in theatre since I was about 10 years old when I started acting with the Stamford Shakespeare Company, playing roles in The Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I continued acting and also started directing student theatre at Exeter University. Then, after graduating I moved out to Trinidad, where I worked as a creative in advertising and ran a theatre company called Bard Productions. That’s when I wrote my first play, Enigma, which is based on the true story of the man who stole the Mona Lisa.

What inspired the creation of a disco remix of a Shakespearean work?

Last year, we brought Rockbeth, a modern musical adaptation of Macbeth, to the Fringe and it was so well received, winning a Fringe Sell-out Laurel, that we thought: let’s have another romp with a Shakespeare play. So far, we have performed Twelfth Night Fever to audiences at our school in Surrey and for one night only at Haslemere Hall, before taking it on the road to Edinburgh. We have had so much support and generosity along the way – with many kind sponsors making it possible for us to do the tour.

What inspired the creation of Twelfth Night Fever?

I was tossing around ideas for another Shakespeare adaptation in various musical genres with my colleague and show producer Tracy, who came up with the title and we both knew straight away that this was the one. As its name suggests, Twelfth Night Fever is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy with lots of disco music and dancing involved. As lovers of the Bard’s comedies will know, you can expect in-jokes about boys dressing up as girls, mistaken identities, general confusion, and melodramatic conflict, but all ending happily with lovers coupled up. In other words, just like Love Island. In our version, the play ends with a massive dance-off. Shakespeare is probably rolling his eyes somewhere.

What has the creative process been like for Twelfth Night Fever?

It was a lot of fun listening to classic disco and finding the tracks that linked best with the story and characters. I think adapting Shakespeare’s comedies is much more of a challenge than the tragedies. Although the text of Macbeth was brutally edited and modernised for Rockbeth, audiences were surprised at how true it was to the original. With Twelfth Night Fever, I have moved further away from Shakespeare’s original. You will recognise the characters and the situations, but our version incorporates a lot of dance, and the script and the humour are much more modern.

Can you tell us a bit more about More the Merrier, the group that created not only this show but last year’s Rockbeth?

More The Merrier is a company of neurodiverse players, coming from More House School in Surrey, a specialist school for boys with learning difficulties. We believe in the rich potential of the human spirit to triumph over adversity and to take performance to the highest level, whatever the ability, regardless of neurodiversity. We came to the Fringe last year as an unknown group with new material, and smashed it, winning over the hearts of our audiences and a Fringe Laurel too. We are hoping that we can capture that same feeling or even more so with Twelfth Night Fever. 

What is it like bringing a show up to the Edinburgh Fringe?

I love taking shows up to the Fringe and have been doing it for many years now. It’s the best place to see a wide range of new and exciting work and to rub shoulders with other artists. For our students of drama, it is an incredibly rich diet of theatre that always has a powerful impact on their own creative work. This will be fantastic exposure for our talented cast, who are all neurodiverse and have had to overcome many personal challenges in order to perform on stage at the world’s largest arts festival.

What do you hope audiences take away from Twelfth Night Fever?

Our audiences will leave feeling a whole lot more sparkly than when they came in. If you enjoy musicals, Shakespeare and disco (and who doesn’t?!) then this is the show for you. It is glitzy, funny and uplifting and will put a smile on even the most curmudgeonly of faces. 

How would you describe Twelfth Night Fever in one word?

Joyful.

Twelfth Night Fever runs from 12 to 17 August at the SpaceTriplex - Big (End On) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

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