Shakespeare’s play as an entirely modern absurdist comedy. 39
Northern Broadsides’ 2005 production boasted remarkable look-alikes as the two pairs of twins:
when Conor Ryan and Andrew Cryer’s uncannily similar forge-technicians turn up as the Antipholuses … you really are persuaded that you’re seeing double. The effect is compounded by the freakily well-matched ginger features and Liverpudlianaccents of Simon Holland Roberts and Conrad Nelson, who play the two Dromios like the shifty scallies you see hanging round the city centre offering to park your car for a quid. 40
Despite, however, the 1950s themed design and swing band score, Rutter’s interpretation of the text was seen to be “over-reliant on slapstick, [it] hurtles along with little regard for complexity of character.” 41
The play’s popularity and place in the modern repertoire has seemed assured since the mid-twentieth century. Time and again productions have demonstrated that a proper attention to the play’s subtleties and complexities over and above its purely comic, farcical elements will be amply rewarded in the theater.
Apart from the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical film of
The Boys from Syracuse
, there have been a number of successful television and film productions, including a 1964 TV “Festival” screening of Clifford Williams’ RSC production with Donald Sinden, Alec McCowan, Ian Richardson, Diana Rigg, and Janet Suzman, and a 1978 Russian version directed by Vadim Gauzner. Trevor Nunn’s acclaimed RSC production with Judi Dench, Francesca Annis (who won a Bafta for her performance as Luciana), Griffith Jones, and Roger Rees was filmed for Associated Television in 1978. The later BBC Shakespeare version (1983) took advantage of the technical possibilities of split-screen work to use the same actors for each twin, with Michael Kitchen as the Antipholuses and Roger Daltrey (lead singer of the Who) as the Dromios. The inclusion of a troupe of commedia dell’arte mime artists divided critics, as did Daltrey’s performance, the acting honors going to Cyril Cusack as Egeon, Charles Gray as Solinus, and Wendy Hiller as Emilia. Robert Woodruff’s production was screened on American television in 1987. An updated American version,
Big Business
, was filmed in 1988, and the following year Richard Monette directed
The Comedy of Errors
for Canadian television. In 1994, on the anniversary of its first performance there, Anthony Besch directed a revival of the play at Gray’s Inn with music by Julian Slade (an updated BBC Sunday-Night Theatre production from 1954).
AT THE RSC
Written at the beginning of Shakespeare’s writing career,
The Comedy of Errors
is the work of a young man who wanted to make his mark. Taking as his model the
Menaechmi
by Plautus, the acknowledged master of Roman comedy, Shakespeare demonstrated his comic skill and ambition by creating not one but two sets of identical twins, thus hugely extending the play’s comic potential. It is Shakespeare’s only farce and productions stand or fall by their success in building to an anarchic comic climax. Farce, however, requires a lunatic logic and there is nothing anarchic about the play’s meticulous plotting, which produces the comic frenzy. The play is disciplined too in following its classical model and observing unity of time: it is Shakespeare’s only play, apart from
The Tempest
, in which the whole of the action takes place in the course of one day. The resulting compression of the action is an important element in the play’s comic drive. The play needs to move us too. Even as we laugh, we must be yearning for the reunions which we think we know must come. If we cannot engage with the characters, the play will be a mere harlequinade and will not do justice to Shakespeare’s ability, even in this slightest of his comedies, to blend gaiety and gravity.
It is a play with which a director can make a splash and, as Ian Hughes (Dromio of Syracuse in the 2000
Northern Broadsides’ 2005 production boasted remarkable look-alikes as the two pairs of twins:
when Conor Ryan and Andrew Cryer’s uncannily similar forge-technicians turn up as the Antipholuses … you really are persuaded that you’re seeing double. The effect is compounded by the freakily well-matched ginger features and Liverpudlianaccents of Simon Holland Roberts and Conrad Nelson, who play the two Dromios like the shifty scallies you see hanging round the city centre offering to park your car for a quid. 40
Despite, however, the 1950s themed design and swing band score, Rutter’s interpretation of the text was seen to be “over-reliant on slapstick, [it] hurtles along with little regard for complexity of character.” 41
The play’s popularity and place in the modern repertoire has seemed assured since the mid-twentieth century. Time and again productions have demonstrated that a proper attention to the play’s subtleties and complexities over and above its purely comic, farcical elements will be amply rewarded in the theater.
Apart from the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical film of
The Boys from Syracuse
, there have been a number of successful television and film productions, including a 1964 TV “Festival” screening of Clifford Williams’ RSC production with Donald Sinden, Alec McCowan, Ian Richardson, Diana Rigg, and Janet Suzman, and a 1978 Russian version directed by Vadim Gauzner. Trevor Nunn’s acclaimed RSC production with Judi Dench, Francesca Annis (who won a Bafta for her performance as Luciana), Griffith Jones, and Roger Rees was filmed for Associated Television in 1978. The later BBC Shakespeare version (1983) took advantage of the technical possibilities of split-screen work to use the same actors for each twin, with Michael Kitchen as the Antipholuses and Roger Daltrey (lead singer of the Who) as the Dromios. The inclusion of a troupe of commedia dell’arte mime artists divided critics, as did Daltrey’s performance, the acting honors going to Cyril Cusack as Egeon, Charles Gray as Solinus, and Wendy Hiller as Emilia. Robert Woodruff’s production was screened on American television in 1987. An updated American version,
Big Business
, was filmed in 1988, and the following year Richard Monette directed
The Comedy of Errors
for Canadian television. In 1994, on the anniversary of its first performance there, Anthony Besch directed a revival of the play at Gray’s Inn with music by Julian Slade (an updated BBC Sunday-Night Theatre production from 1954).
AT THE RSC
Written at the beginning of Shakespeare’s writing career,
The Comedy of Errors
is the work of a young man who wanted to make his mark. Taking as his model the
Menaechmi
by Plautus, the acknowledged master of Roman comedy, Shakespeare demonstrated his comic skill and ambition by creating not one but two sets of identical twins, thus hugely extending the play’s comic potential. It is Shakespeare’s only farce and productions stand or fall by their success in building to an anarchic comic climax. Farce, however, requires a lunatic logic and there is nothing anarchic about the play’s meticulous plotting, which produces the comic frenzy. The play is disciplined too in following its classical model and observing unity of time: it is Shakespeare’s only play, apart from
The Tempest
, in which the whole of the action takes place in the course of one day. The resulting compression of the action is an important element in the play’s comic drive. The play needs to move us too. Even as we laugh, we must be yearning for the reunions which we think we know must come. If we cannot engage with the characters, the play will be a mere harlequinade and will not do justice to Shakespeare’s ability, even in this slightest of his comedies, to blend gaiety and gravity.
It is a play with which a director can make a splash and, as Ian Hughes (Dromio of Syracuse in the 2000
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