Twelfth Night is one of my favorites of the bard. I have never seen a production that was actually comic about Malvolio, though. To genuinely find that subplot funny, you'd have to believe that being pompous and above your station deserved that level of torture. Twelfth Night is a comedy--in that it ends in marriages--but it's always been fairly melancholy.
There's a version on NT at Home (which you can rent a la carte if you don't have a subscription) that also cross casts a woman as Malvolia, in this case Tamsin Grieg. I really, really enjoy this production. They manage to make all the Sir Toby stuff genuinely funny. And with Malvolia, Grieg plays both the buffoonery and the tragedy, and they give the last moment of the play to her walking away, head held high. There's also an undeniable shade of queer bashing when you have a female Malvolia--it's unavoidable that part of what she's being humiliated for is not just loving above her station but loving a woman.
I find it interesting as modern productions try to queer Shakespeare--you can bring out the very queer things already in the text, but without cross casting Viola as you observed, the endings are always straight.
I think with Malvolio it really matters how the production handles that character. And it may be the case that there's no version that you'd be okay with.
(I mean, that's where I am with Taming of the Shrew--even the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton version which tries its hardest to empower Kate, I can't deal with the level of abuse in that play any more. Certainly not knowing that audiences were meant to find it all both justified and hilarious.)
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There's a version on NT at Home (which you can rent a la carte if you don't have a subscription) that also cross casts a woman as Malvolia, in this case Tamsin Grieg. I really, really enjoy this production. They manage to make all the Sir Toby stuff genuinely funny. And with Malvolia, Grieg plays both the buffoonery and the tragedy, and they give the last moment of the play to her walking away, head held high. There's also an undeniable shade of queer bashing when you have a female Malvolia--it's unavoidable that part of what she's being humiliated for is not just loving above her station but loving a woman.
I find it interesting as modern productions try to queer Shakespeare--you can bring out the very queer things already in the text, but without cross casting Viola as you observed, the endings are always straight.
I think with Malvolio it really matters how the production handles that character. And it may be the case that there's no version that you'd be okay with.
(I mean, that's where I am with Taming of the Shrew--even the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton version which tries its hardest to empower Kate, I can't deal with the level of abuse in that play any more. Certainly not knowing that audiences were meant to find it all both justified and hilarious.)