“The Comedy of Errors”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - July 2010

“In form and feature, face and limb,
I grew so like my brother,
That folks got taking me for him,
And each for one another.
It puzzled all our kith and kin,
It reached [an awful]1 pitch;
For one of us was born a twin,
Yet not a soul knew which.”

- The Twins, Henry Sambrooke Leigh

Oh Dromio, Dromio, wherefore art thou Dromio?”

Seriously. If you had given birth to twin boys who looked so alike that you couldn’t tell them apart, why would you give them both the same first name? I would dearly love to ask the mothers of the Dromios and the Antipholuses that question. I could storm the stage and ask the latter – she’s right there in the last scene – but of course we all know the answer: If the two sets of identical twins in “The Comedy of Errors” didn’t both have the same first names, there would be no farce. Duh!

Considering that the playwriting of Titus Maccius Plautus (circa 254-184 BCE) is often described as crude, it says something profound about the human funny bone that two English language adaptations of his comedies, written four centuries apart by acknowledged masters of their craft, opened in the Berkshires the same week. The 1962 Stephen Sondheim musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the WTF is based on the Plautine comedies Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus, and Mostellaria; and The Comedy of Errors is a riff on the Menaechmi, written by William Shakespeare c. 1592.

What was funny in ancient Rome was funny in Elizabethan England and it’s still funny today.

Directors Dennis Krausnick and Clare Reidy and their corps of actors from Shakespeare & Company’s Center for Actor Training Performance Intern Program, have set their Comedy in a circus ring designed by Carl Sprague, added a prologue complete with cartwheels, a Ringmaster (Bob Wicks), and the obligatory bouncy strains of Julius Fučík ‘s The Entrance of the Gladiators.

After this promising and buoyant opening, the company reverts to Shakespeare’s script with the ponderous opening speech of Egeon (David Fierro), the longest chunk of pure exposition the Bard ever penned, in which he explains dutifully about the two sets of twin boys separated in infancy, yadda, yadda, yadda. And in case you aren’t comfortable with Shakespeare’s language, the gist of it is repeated in the program in modern English.

Krausnick explained in his curtain speech that the Performance Intern Program, of which he is the Director, is centered on the idea that the best way to learn how to perform Shakespeare is to perform Shakespeare, and I agree. Given that consideration, it is not surprising that this production aims to present Shakespeare’s text as he wrote it. But the jubilant circus prologue combined with the blurb in the program could easily have substituted for much of Egeon’s speech and allowed that dull bit of narration to be shortened. Krausnick has wisely assigned it to his most broadly comic actor, but even Fierro’s strong delivery cannot save this from being a rather leaden interlude between the prologue and the mayhem that ensues when two sets of twins wreck chaos and confusion on the town of Ephesus.

Plautus set his play in Epidamnum, but Shakespeare moved the action to Ephesus, as his plot gives ample resonance to the advice St. Paul offered in his epistle to that community: Wives obey your husbands, husbands love your wives, servants obey your masters, masters forebear threatening your servants, etc. The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, and the shortest, but it is also one of the most overtly Christian in its sentiments.

And as soon as Egeon finishes the exposition we are off like a shot as the Syracusian team of Antipholus and Dromio no sooner make landfall than they are mistaken for their Ephesian twins. Neither Antipholus of Syracus’ (Shawn Ahmed) wife Adriana (Janel Miley) nor the lusty Courtesan (Andre St. Clair Thompson) at the Porpentine with whom he has the occasional dalliance tell them apart, which means these two guys are REMARKABLY identical! Luce the Kitchen Wench (Michelle Guadalupe) can’t tell Dromio of Syracuse (Sam Parrott) from her lover Dromio of Ephesus (Paul D. Masterson) either. Hmmm…

So if these intimate relations are confused you can imagine how mixed up the common folks are! Adriana’s slightly dim-witted sister Luciana (Stacey Weckstein) is befuddled and distraught when the very single Antipholus of Ephesus (Jason Sanford), who she believes to be her brother-in-law, starts pitching woo. Angelo the Goldsmith (Fierro), with whom Antipholus of Ephesus has contracted for the purchase of a chain can’t tell them apart. No, the whole town is oblivious to the fact that there are now two Antipholuses and two Dromios in their midst

Despite the circus theme, I have seen much broader productions of this play, notably at Shakespeare & Company in 2001 and 2004. A few cast members turn cartwheels at the start, and Thompson demonstrates amazing flexibility, but otherwise things are rather staid. There is only one thwacking stick and pitifully few satisfying thwacks. I’m not sure St. Paul intended his admonition to masters to apply to the stage.

Ahmed, Sanford, Masterson, and Parrott wail and gnash their teeth in a series of hilarious takes as their sunny day in Ephesus devolves into, well, a comedy of errors, but I found no real side-splitting laughs in their performances. Miley and Weckstein play the sisters as the very models of feminine decorum, although Guadalupe is allowed to get down (literally, on the floor) and dirty as Luce. The only “woman” really allowed to strut “her” stuff is Thompson. Back in the late 16th century the whole pile of them would have been men in drag, which might be an interesting bit of casting – similar to what director Jessica Stone has by all accounts done very successfully with an all-male cast for “…Forum.”

As mentioned before, Fierro is the most broadly physical comic in the company, and he is delightful as the every smiling Angelo. The remaining members of the cast – Wicks, Matt Story and Meaghan Daley – are unremarkable in a variety of roles.

But this brings me to a running gag that is allowed to run far too long. Antipholus of Ephesus has commissioned Angelo to create a gold chain as a gift for Adriana. First mentioned in Act II, scene i, the word “Chain” occurs in speech 45 times, by my reckoning. And every time anyone says it, we hear the “ding!” of a desktop call bell. This is inspired, no doubt, by Dromio of Ephesus’ line in Act IV, scene ii: “A chain, a chain! Do you not hear it ring?” The joke here, and it is a creaky old Elizabethan one that needs explaining to a modern audience, is on the similarity between the words “chain” and “change.” Church bells still do ring changes, which are not indications of the change in time, but demonstrations of the mathematics of music as multiple tuned bells are rung in precise numerical patterns. Understand? No? Me neither. I am positive this wasn’t the funniest joke in the play in 1592, and it certainly isn’t today. Here the company manages to make the gag work maybe a dozen times, and then it just gets older and older and older… Isn’t there a Rule of Three in comedy? I am sure there is no Rule of Forty-Five.

Aside from that, and Cathy Gray’s inscrutable costumes (what IS Adriana wearing???), everything works and runs smoothly in this two-hour production. Lighting Designer Will Cleland, in cooperation with Sound Designer Michael Pfeiffer, have devised a clever light/sound effect that makes it appear that everyone is posing for happy family portraits in the final scene.

At the end of Plautus’ Menaechmi, the servant twins receive their freedom, as Pseudolus does in …Forum. Shakespeare isn’t so charitable. All they get are a doppelgangers, with which further farcical mayhem can be created, and semi-apologies from their masters for the undeserved thwacks they received. Elizabethan England was obviously a bad time and place to be a slave.

You can view the complete photo gallery for this production HERE.

The Comedy of Errors runs in The Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre on Shakespeare & Company‘s Kemble Street campus in Lenox, MA, 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. The show runs two hours with one intermission and is suitable for the whole family. 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.

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