cast list
Alister Cameron, Christopher Ravenscroft, Christopher Logan, Tom Silburn, Daniel
Weyman, Joseph Kloska, Josh Cohen, Jo Herbert, Sophie Roberts, Daniel Llewelyn-
Williams, David Shaw-Parker, Faye Winter, Richard Warwick, Tim Freeman, Anna-Jane
Casey, Veronica Roberts, Richie Hart, Paul Frankish, Alan Brown
directed
Philip Franks
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A billboard on the stage of the Open Air Theatre proclaims 'Ephesus
Welcomes You'. The small print, on the other hand, reads ‘Excludes all those from
Syracuse. Any Syracusan found in Ephesus is subject to a fine or death’.
Together, the two proclamations sum up The Comedy of Errors as a whole. At
first glance, it is a straight forward farce concerning mistaken identity, but below the surface
it raises less comfortable questions concerning hierarchy and attitudes towards ‘the other’.
Not that any of this prevents the play from being brilliant fun, and in this production
director Philip Franks makes some very intelligent decisions. He has embellished the
play with music and visual distractions, while ensuring that the text is respected.
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The result is an evening that
grants us all the exuberance that we crave from outdoor theatre in the sun, while also
providing us with an insightful performance of one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies.
Franks sets the play in the 1940s with Ephesus becoming Casablanca. A giant billboard
forms the backdrop, with baskets, birdcages and carpets lying around, and a sign advertising
the ‘Porpentine Cafe Americcun’ (sic) hanging above a live jazz duo. Characters are dressed
in a mixture of Western and ‘Ali Baba’ style costumes, alluding to the different nationalities
and hierarchies involved in the plot, and jazz and swing tunes blare out from speakers or are played live on stage.
There are plenty of understated jokes such as the priceless way in which the Abbess,
Emelia (Veronica Roberts) simply turns and hitches up her habit after finishing her speech.
Other aspects are less subtle. Between each scene, people fill the stage and dance, or head
down to the beach in 1940s swimwear. Franks has also taken the decision to add some new
songs as cabaret numbers, utilising the captivating voice of Anna-Jane Casey who plays the
Courtesan. Some of these do involve additional modern words such as ‘Is what I’m feeling
the Real McCoy?’, while extra spoken lines include references to Clark Gable and the Seven Dwarfs.
All this only works, however, because the heart of the play is kept pure. The acting is
superb, as Daniel Weyman and Daniel Llewelyn-Williams as Antipholus of Syracuse and
Ephesus respectively, and Joseph Kloska and Josh Cohen as the two Dromios, succeed in
keeping up the pretence throughout. They, and Jo Herbert as Adriana and Sophie Roberts
as Luciana, really make us believe that the situation they are in is confusing them beyond
belief, and that they have no inkling of why everybody has suddenly turned mad.
In the second half, it sometimes feels as if things might go too far as gorillas grace the
stage and the ensemble suddenly burst into a jive in the midst of a chase. The large open
air performance space, however, enables the production to cope with such deviations,
with the result that this Comedy of Errors is a triumph in getting it right.
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London reviews
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For more theatre reviews, come and visit us at Exeunt
Accolade, Finborough
Water, Tricycle
Antonioni Project, Barbican
Greenland, National
Du Goudron et des Plumes, Barbican
King Lear, Roundhouse
Double Falsehood, Union
Twisted Tales, Lyric Hammersmith
Less Than Kind, Jermyn Street
theatre
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