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Each little red star is a clickable link to additional information on whatever listing it appears beside. It might be a link to an article in a local newspaper, or it might be a press release the company has sent me.“Comedy of Errors” is Lunchtime Theatre at Shakespeare & Company
Posted by Gail M. Burns - June 2010
The Comedy of Errors
“She is spherical, like a globe. I could find out countries in her.”
June 26 – September 4
{Lenox, MA} — Directors Dennis Krausnick and Clare Reidy give Shakespeare & Company’s lunchtime audiences something fun to chew on after their meal with a wild ride through Ephesus, a far-away land of magic, music, and mistaken loves in William Shakespeare’s unbridled comedy, The Comedy of Errors. Bring a group, your friends or your whole clan to enjoy this ‘family friendly’ production of The Comedy of Errors. Be sure to come early to take advantage of one of our satisfying lunchtime offerings before you catch the Company’s up and coming young actors in the show (all of whom are participants in its Performance Intern Program). Press Opening is Saturday, July 3 at 12:45 pm. To RSVP or arrange interviews, contact Publicity Director Elizabeth Aspenlieder (413) 637-1199 ext 110 aspenlieder@shakespeare.org.
The Comedy of Errors runs in The Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre June 26 through September 4 with all curtain times at 12:45pm. Tickets run $14 to $18 for Previews, and $16 to $24 performances on or after July 3. Check out the website for specific show dates, further information, to book your tickets, to learn about Student, Senior, Rush, and Group rates while taking advantage of a cornucopia of special savings! Visit: www.shakespeare.org or call the Box Office at (413) 637-3353.
ONLY $8 BUCKS! In keeping with the setting of the play, patrons are invited to purchase specially prepared European inspired lunches to enjoy on the terrace overlooking the Dottie and Stephen Weber Wetlands Garden or in the comfortable Iredale Theatre Lobby in the Bernstein. A varied selection of scrumptious lunches may include paninis, salads or fresh fruit, to sweet treats and more — all of which should be ordered in advance from the Box Office. Lunches are provided by S&Co.’s masterful Executive Chef, Ron Werth. Lunches are available for pick-up in the theatre Lobby at noon.
Krausnick and Reidy direct the 11 member cast, a talented group of young actors accepted into the Performance Internship Program; a competitive, summer-long immersion in actor training and performance led by Krausnick (also the Company’s Director of its Center for Actor Training) and Shakespeare & Company’s master teachers. Internships are a valuable and popular route taken by many young performers looking to take the next step in their careers and offer an opportunity for the best and brightest young actors to gain professional theatre experience straight out of drama school. The participants will get this experience fully—by taking ownership of their own Shakespeare production in a professional theatre setting, and all the challenges and rewards that entails. “Taking training into rehearsal, and taking rehearsal into performance brings the purpose of ‘playing’ back to its essence, which is “…to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature,” adds Krausnick.
Participants work 6 days a week in rehearsals and in classes which include, voice, movement, Elizabethan dance, sonnet, text and fight work. They also understudy many of the roles in both the Mainstage and Bernstein productions and can be seen this summer in the world premiere of More Words! More Play! (Wordplay II) at the Rose Footprint Theatre.
More Words! More Play! (Wordplay II) is a free whirlwind tour through Shakespearean jokes, puns, facts and zingers playing August 12 through September 5. Participants will also be giving many of the curtain speeches in Founders’ Theatre, and the three, soon-to-be legendary Preludes performed for free before evening shows at Founders’.
“Comedy of Errors is a warm and saucy play of mistaken identities,” says Krausnick. “Shakespeare was clearly influenced by the Italian Commedia dell’Arte players when he as a young man and wrote this short play. He takes the tradition of Greek and Roman comedies, spices it with Commedia antics, and mixes a hilarious concoction. Our production takes the urban landscape of Ephesus as a starting point: a town full of “cozenage” where mysterious happenings are commonplace. The town is washed by the warm currents of the Mediterranean and is a backdrop for the themes of loss and wondrous recovery that resolve the fast-paced story. It is a very physical, sexy, and even romantic dash written mostly in delightful rhyming couplets.”
One of Shakespeare’s earliest and most outrageous comedies of mistaken identity, The Comedy of Errors opens with Aegeon, a merchant from Syracuse, arriving in Ephesus, a bustling and close-knit shipping port off the coast of Greece. Aegeon, the father of twin sons, has landed in Ephesus illegally and is quickly arrested and condemned to death unless a ransom is paid by sunset. However, before he goes to jail he recounts a tragic story that happened to him 33 years earlier…
Aegeon named both his sons Antipholus, and bought another pair of twins, both named Dromio, to be their servants. Aegeon and his wife, Aemilia, were traveling home with their young sons and the servants when they were shipwrecked in a violent storm. Egeon could save only one Antipholus and one Dromio and has not seen the rest of his family since.
Leaving Syracuse in search of their long-lost twin brothers, Antipholus and Dromio arrive in Ephesus, unaware that their father Egeon has also landed there on the same quest. Unknown to all of them, the Antipholus and Dromio (home team) who were lost at sea 33 years earlier, have been living in Ephesus for many years. Suddenly the boys from Syracuse find themselves greeted like old friends, Antipholus (visitor) finds that he has acquired a wife, and everyone in Ephesus seems to be behaving very strangely, which is when the true ‘comedy of errors’ ensues.
This is Company Founder, Director, Board of Trustees member, and Director of The Center for Acting Training Dennis Krausnick’s 33rd season with the Company, where he has directed and acted in dozens of productions. Directing credits include Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Titus Andronicus, The Winter’s Tale, Much Ado About Nothing, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, King Lear, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Ethan Frome and a number of other Wharton adaptations for the stage. Krausnick played the title role in Lear this past year at Wake Forest University and in the Bare Bard Series at Maryland Shakespeare Festival. He will be performing Lear for Orange County Shakespeare this coming September and is looking forward to performing it at Shakespeare & Company next season. He teaches and directs in theater programs across the country as well as designing and leading the actor-training programs for S&Co.
Long time Company member Clare Reidy returns to S&Co. for her tenth season where she is Co-Director of The Comedy of Errors and text and voice Coach for The Winter’s Tale. S&Co. credits include: Co-Director: Pericles, Devil’s Advocate; Text Coach for Tina Packer: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, King Lear, King John, Antony & Cleopatra, Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, Coriolanus. Text coach for Julius Caesar (at Mercury Theatre, Colchester, England).