The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online Page A

Shakespeare Theater: “the arrangement works extremely well except at the end when the denouement requires two men on the stage to do the work of four. However, the charade atmosphere is so well caught that nobody cares.” 24 It was set in “a 17th-century framework” with
    a gay, sunny set that reflects the light of the Mediterranean and his handsome costumes … Mr Seale has helped himself to the traditions of commedia dell’arte, adding bystanders en masse and even a Harlequin and Columbine to decorate or react to the events of the story. 25
    This device failed to impress one critic, however: “as the evening progressed one began to wonder just what these figures had to do with the play.” 26
    Ian Judge in his 1990 production for the RSC (discussed below) also doubled the parts, as did Kathryn Hunter in her production at the Globe Theatre in 1999. For one critic it was “Doomed to failure before it started by the alluring but always fatal decision to double the Antipholuses and the Dromios.” 27 Nevertheless, the production was popular with audiences, who enjoyed the broad physical clowning of Marcello Magni as the Dromios, but undone by its relentless comic opportunism:
    The setting was vaguely Turkish, with middle eastern instruments accompanying the action from above, and turbaned men and veiled women peopling the world of Ephesus in a potentially interesting way. There were merchants of all sorts, too, plying their wares between the scenes, but it was the fish merchants who began to give the intentions of the production away, their special line in plastic fish proving irresistible as missiles both on stage and between stage and groundlings. The plastic fish epitomized the project. 28
    Danny Scheie’s thoroughgoing doubling, with just seven actors for all sixteen parts, in his Aurora Theater production in 2000, succeeded by virtue of its polish and high-octane performances:
    Setting the piece in a vague early-20th century NYC, Scheie lifts ideas from the prior century’s stage melodramas, vaudeville, even the Three Stooges and “Gone With the Wind.” A red curtain at one end of the small, unelevated playspace is sole “set”; gags include the aristocratic twins’ death-sentenced fatherEgeon (Joan Mankin) illustrating his tragic family separation 33 years ago via classroom transparency projector. But humor is mostly dependent on the terrific cast’s game slapstick, broad albeit precise physical characterizations, and spot-on timing. 29
    Lacking faith in the play itself, many directors have gone for gimmicks. Robin Phillips’ 1975 Stratford Festival, Ontario, however, justified its Wild West setting with the duke as a wealthy rancher, the Antipholuses as Mississippi riverboat gamblers, and the Dromios as cowboys and a shotgun-toting Emilia. The transposition, symbolized by a “huge covered wagon that was at various times a kind of tiring-room, a cornucopia disgorging hundreds of actors and acrobats, a priory, and a convenient kind of wall to hang beer-mugs, laundry and so on,” 30 which dominated the set, worked well with its rich implications of migration and displacement. Robert Woodruff’s 1983 production at the Goodman Theater, Chicago, featured the well-known juggling act the Flying Karamazov Brothers as the two sets of twins, with the fifth playing Shakespeare, plus clowns Avner Eisenberg and a cross-dressed Ethyl Eichelberger, playing both Emilia and the Courtesan, complete with signature cartwheels. Woodruff played “fast, loose and lunatic with the original” 31 and the production attracted criticism and praise in equal measure:
    Early in the performance the strangers from Syracuse made a hazardous journey across the stage through flying objects— the uncertainties and dangers of Ephesus thus made palpable in an instant. And at the end, the Karamazovs as the reunited sets of twins juggled multi-colored pins in perfect unison. The routine ended with the pins gracefully falling through