WHEN Jonathan Munby starts on a new project his first act is very simple.

“I lock myself in a room and sit with the play to read it afresh,” he says ahead of English Touring Theatre’s take on Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night.

“I let the production emerge from those initial ideas and feelings that the play evokes.”

With the tale of lost parents and brothers, and a line from Maria’s servant about a recent war, Munby came up with an early 20th-century period setting between the carnage of the First World War and the rise of the Nazis.

“There is a real sense of grief and mourning,” he says. “The characters emerge from this with a wonderful giddiness. The central part of the play, with people falling in love, felt like the heydays of the 1920s with its experiments in music, art and culture. It was a paroxysm of joy that happened in reaction to the Great War.”

Munby is keen to stress the setting doesn’t overtake the central story though.

“I don’t like to pin things down too much and be too literal,” he says. “It sometimes might cloud the play. The design should inspire the audience’s imagination rather than direct it.”

He sees Twelfth Night as a basis for much of the character comedy which was to come in the ensuing 400 years.

“I think Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are the prototype for lots of double acts which came after,” he says. “You can see them in Morecambe And Wise and Little And Large.

“What Shakespeare writes is a great sitcom. The audience meets the characters for the first time and then are taken on a journey with them, with a fantastic pay-off in the second half. We see certain lives unravel before us, specifically with Malvolio and his fall from grace.

“Somebody once said to me the best comedy is somebody else’s tragedy – and that’s the sense you get with Basil Fawlty and Malvolio. Their tragedy is hilarious to us, we love to see people set themselves up for a fall.”

The 1920s setting did set a few difficulties in the production. Problems arose with Malvolio’s distinctive yellow stockings with cross-garters – which he is encouraged to wear to capture the countess Olivia’s heart – to some of the more topical jokes in Shakespeare’s text.

“Getting the cross garters was a little tricky,” admits Munby. “The designer and I had to work hard at finding a more contemporary way of realising them.

“When it comes to topical references the best thing to do usually is cut them out. If a reference is really specific about an event or person or place 400 years ago then there is no way of communicating that with a contemporary audience. There is a scene where Feste tries to make Olivia laugh – and we kept a lot of the period pieces in there. It helps tell the story of a man trying to make a woman laugh who is very upset with him and resisting. The fact the jokes fall flat on their face is what the scene is about.”

As for the end of the play there is a distinct shadow cast over the action – not least from Malvolio swearing revenge on the household.

“It has never been happily ever after,” says Munby. “I’m not sure people end up with the right people. I wanted to challenge the comic convention of everyone skipping off into the sunset arm in arm. There is a naturally human and complicated shadow at the end of the play – Feste has a wonderful song about the cyclical nature of time. The cloud which hangs over the play sees the characters look forward to an unknown future.”

Twelfth Night forms part of English Touring Theatre’s 21st anniversary season – which was created following a survey of audiences’ favourite plays.

Arcadia, which comes to Theatre Royal Brighton in January, was another play which featured high in the final list.

“We are giving our audience the plays they want to see,” says Munby, who is a creative associate with English Touring Theatre.

“I feel very passionately that theatre should be enjoyed by the whole country. We need to work harder as an industry to get good drama out to the regions.”

Twelfth Night Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road, Tuesday, November 25, to Saturday, November 29