A Comedy of Errors...

[fajrdrako]

I just got home from seeing Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors at the National Arts Centre. I'd had my doubts beforehand, partly because it isn't one of Shakespeare's more substantial plays, and partly because it was directed by Peter Hinton, who failed to impress me with his strangely pointless and random production of Taming of the Shrew at Stratford.

Well, it turned out to be fabulous. Not the best Shakespeare I've ever seen, but everything that it ought to be: funny and outrageous and predicable and quirky and imaginative.

The story, if you don't know it, is all about two sets of twins who are confused for each other. Separated when young, one grew up in Ephesus (with a servant, Dromio) and the other in Syracuse (with Dromio's twin brother, also called Dromio). Their father goes travelling to look for them and is about to be executed for being in Epheses without enough money. As it happens, every one turns up in Ephesus, and each Antipholus keeps being confused with the other one (and Dromio with Dromio) and it's all outrageously silly.

This production played up the old-fashioned silliness with broad humour and topical references - not in the dialogue, which was pure Shakespeare, but in the business and the props and the nuances. We have references to urban transit, the RCMP, gay marriage, Star Wars and its fandom, Star Trek, and tiger slippers. The various duels are fought with light sabres. Most times when the actors went on or off the stage, they used the hand sanitizers at the doorways.

And the set was gorgeous. Minimalist - I love minimalist sets. Metallic and reflective walls that occasionally showed windows or doors or an inset bed. Before the curtain - Figuratively speaking, as there was no curtain - the set was bare, with a small ship hanging in the middle near the floor. On one wall: a clock with no hands. On the other wall: a picture of the Queen. On both: the hand sanitizers.



Of the various actors, I thought the two women playing Dromio were the funniest, Danielle Desormeaux and Debra Kirshenbaum, both masters of physical comedy. I thought in passing that Clare Coulter, who played the Abbess, could easily take the role of Sybilla Crawford, Dowager Lady Culter - and that was before I saw her name.

My favourite character was the depressed but sexy old man, Antipholus of Ephesus, played by Andreas Apergas.