Theatre - Sheridan Morley on Sam Mendes's magnificent farewell to the Donmar, and a dance show that fails to swing

Let us suppose, if only for the length of this review, that Shakespeare had never written Twelfth Night. Let us suppose that it was written not for the Globe around 1599, but instead for the Moscow Art Theatre around 1899, and that the author was Anton Chekhov.

What then? What you would get is roughly what Sam Mendes now gives us in his farewell production at the Donmar Warehouse: because the company is cross-cast with his already triumphant Uncle Vanya, which they have now been playing for several sold-out weeks, it is hardly surprising that they should be in Russian mood. Indeed, the company of 12, by far the greatest ensemble in London this past decade or two, are more pre-revolutionary Russian than anyone in the Stoppard plays at the National or in Afterplay at the Gielgud, all of which are also set in and around Moscow or St Petersburg towards the turn of the 19th century or soon after it.

The Mendes Twelfth Night is a revelation and a revolution: David Bradley as Aguecheek, Anthony O'Donnell as Feste, Selina Cadell as Maria all give performances suggesting they can hardly wait to get back to the cherry orchard before it is too late. Simon Russell Beale's Malvolio is no longer a figure of cross-gartered fun and easy mockery, but an intelligent man in deep depression. Equally, Emily Watson as Viola and Helen McCrory as Olivia manage to suggest that if the plot does not work out to their satisfaction, a gay alliance might not be out of the question.

I have never seen a more complex, fascinating, layered Twelfth Night: this is no longer a mindless frolic of mistaken identity but a strange, soulful tragi-comedy about bisexuality, depression, and misplaced power, closer to the Shakespeare of the late Winter's Tale or Cymbeline in its many moods and internal conflicts. There are even echoes of Mendes's recent movie Road to Perdition in an opening sequence where men in long black coats form a semi-circle around the stage.

The play opens on Anthony Ward's minimal, candlelit set as a dark thriller and then shifts into an autumnal, melancholy work, underscored by George Stiles's haunting music. In the final reconciliation scene, the three plotters against Malvolio, Aguecheek, Maria and Toby Belch, carry suitcases to silently indicate that they have been fired from the fools' paradise they have made of Olivia's palace. David Bradley, Selina Cadell and a newcomer to the ensemble, Paul Jesson, play these roles as if for the first time. The play is sold out until late November and then bound for New York so maybe you better start booking airline tickets.

Mendes himself now packs up his suitcase at the Donmar after a decade, thereby ending what has undoubtedly been the most successful theatrical experiment in Britain this past decade. In a time when virtually every resident theatre company is starting out under a new leader, his will be the hardest act to follow.

From Agnes de Mille in the 1940s through to Bob Fosse in the 1960s to Susan Stroman today, American audiences have always regarded their dance directors as stars. Over here, our attitude is rather different, though not because we lack great dance directors. From the veteran Wendy Toye, also the first woman to make movies in this country, through to the great Gillian Lynne of Cats to the irreplaceable Irving Davies whom tragically we lost just a few days ago, we have always been rich in choreographers, but we tend not to put their names in lights along Shaftesbury Avenue. Here, they are part of the package, along with designers and lighting consultants and the rest of the backstage team; there, they qualify for top billing. It could be argued that Stroman with three Tonys to her credit is currently just about the biggest star of the great white way.

All of which makes her Contact (at the Queen's Theatre after three years at the Lincoln Center, the longest ever run there), a disappointment. A dance show set entirely to recorded music, it comes in three separate episodes. The first, Swinging, attempts to bring to life a famous Fragonard painting of a girl on a swing, and suffers horribly by comparison with the Seurat that Sondheim brought to life in Sunday in the Park with George. The second, Did You Move?, looks like a dance break weirdly cut from an episode of The Sopranos; while the title piece, which occupies the whole second half, looks like a deliberate echo of all the screen ballets of Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, not to mention the one it most closely resembles, "Girl Hunt" from the 1953 classic Bandwagon

As you'd expect of a Stroman show, the dancing is breathtaking: her company of 30 is made up almost equally from the West End and classical ballet, so that Leigh Zimmerman and Michael Praed come from Shaftesbury Avenue and Sarah Wildor from Covent Garden. Moreover, the curtain call is unquestionably the best in town, again a Stroman signature virtue: but the two hours preceding it seem to me mindless, derivative and oddly pointless.

Twelfth Night is at the Donmar Warehouse, London WC2 (020 7369 1732) until 30 November;

Contact is at Queen's Theatre, London, (08708901110)

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