 | Comedy of Errors |  |
"It is thyself, mine own self's better part,
Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart,
My food, my fortune and my sweet hope's aim,
My sole earth's heaven and my heaven's claim." Act III, scene ii
Written: 1593
Marin Shakespeare Company ; September 9, 2006 San Rafael, CA
Starring :
Reviewed on : 2006-09-18 04:59:48 ; Reviewed by : Denise Battista
| Latin graffiti adorns the stage at Marin Shakespeare Company's production of
The Comedy of Errors. In flagrante delicto (Caught in the act); Nos
morituri te salutant (We who are about to die salute you); Amor vincit omnia
(Love conquers all); Tempus fugit (Time flies); Illegitimi non carborundum
(Don't let the bastards grind you down). The Porpentine Inn, complete with
a red light district balcony, sits stage right, and left stage marks the
Temple of Vestals. Between Egeon's sob story of his great loss and search,
the many cases of mistaken identity, the episodes of blossoming love versus
love forever in bloom, and finally the fact that all the events of the play
take place in the matter of a single day, all the Latin is accounted for.
This, however, is where this production's profundity comes to an end.
Or is it? Director James Dunn takes the farcical nature of Shakespeare's
play very seriously. The text offers few opportunities for character
development; Dunn offers none. His production provides much comic relief,
but no relief from the comedy. Is this an error? I think not, because Dunn
focuses on skillfully developing a very fast-moving plot in a matter of 105
minutes, and in retrospect, the ever-flowing comedy lightens any notion of
tragedy in this play to the point of balance. Like many (arguably all) of
Shakespeare's comedies, there lies the potential for tragedy. A Midsummer
Night's Dream carries subplots of abduction and forced love; The Two
Gentlemen of Verona mutes the two once strong women of Verona at the end of the play and turns them into pawns for the sake of male bonding. The Comedy of Errors begins with an innocent man who must lose his head at the end of the day; it revolves around a sad story of loss and woe, and it scripts the
incessant beating and mistreatment of servants. Dunn lightens the multiple
blows upon the Dromios to just a few funny incidents. He creates a larger
role for Egeon by making him care about his impending death. A drunkard
dressed like Julius Caesar delivers the serious tone of Duke Solinus
(Stephen Dietz). And the "quasi-metaphysical" nature (as noted by Harold
Bloom in his brilliant text, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human) of
Antipholus of Syracuse is all but lost in consequence of making the two
brothers quite the same, one-dimensional character.
Andrew Fonda Jackson portrays both Antipholuses, while Brandon Roberts plays
the two Dromios. Antipholus of Ephesus sports dark sunglasses; his brother
does not. Dromio of Ephesus wears his yellow cap forward and is sweeter
than his brother, while Dromio of Syracuse wears his yellow cap backwards,
and acts like a white-boy rapper gone wrong when he breaks it down for the
audience. Roberts is the comedic star of this production. He looks a bit
like an elf; he is quite petite, and he is acrobatic as he scampers around
the stage. He is welcome when he is on the stage, and missed when he is
not.
Dunn takes Shakespeare's text and creates slapstick bits that turns dialogue
between the Syracusean Antipholus and Dromio into metatheatre - in this case
the creation of a play within the play. The cast swarms upstage tooting
their kazoos. Jackson and Roberts sit next to each other downstage, their
legs crossed left to right in unison. Someone holds up a sign behind them
reading "Dromio's Kitchen Wench Bit" (Another bit performed before this, and
in the same manner, is "Dromio's Bald Pate Bit"). The kazoos stop and the
players freeze as Roberts defines the spherical physique of Nell (Erica O'Connor).
Both Jackson and Roberts deliver their lines using the accent that is proper
to the region:
Antipholus S: "In what part of her body stands Ireland?"
Dromio S: "Marry, sir, in her buttocks. I found it out by the
bogs."
O'Connor is on a balcony center stage with a drum, which she beats with a
"ba-dum-bum" to seal the joke. The band of kazoos strikes another pose for
the next joke, and the next. These are well-done and well-interpreted
scenes that permit the actors to step slightly out of character as they
create a slapstick routine for the audience to enjoy.
While Roberts is the star, he doesn't completely outshine his cast members.
Mary Knoll as Adriana, and LeAnne Rumbel as her sister Luciana are two peas
in a pod. I've seen this duo in a number of Shakespeare plays throughout
the Bay Area this season, and this comedic interaction is by far their best
yet. Jack Powell plays Egeon, but as previously mentioned, his role is
expanded, presumably in order to turn his tragedy into a comedy. In the
opening scene, Powell takes the stage with the intoxicated Duke. He tells
his story of loss and eternal searching as though he's told it a million
times before, complete with a suitcase filled with props. He uses four of
the "Groovy Girls" dolls to act out the tragic shipwreck that separated him
from his wife, his sons, and the Dromio twins. As we all know, Egeon has
until the end of the day to raise his ransom. In the text, this ends his
action until the great reveal at the end of the play. In Dunn's
interpretation, Powell appears periodically in silly attempts to raise his
bond. In one instance, Powell is a blind man begging for change. In
another, he sells Girl Scout cookies. A band of officers wearing ridiculous
brooms on their helmets initially fall for the gag before a latent
realization, and a chase scene in order to clean up the streets of any
riff-raff. These comical scenes are pantomimed, thus Shakespeare's dialogue
is thankfully not finagled.
The big reveal at the end of the play is anticlimactic and a tad
distracting, although I do offer my empathy due to the difficulty involved
in staging this scene. It's inevitable that the two Antipholuses and
Dromios must all stand before us, and they do so by way of two nameless
actors who take the place of the boys from Ephesus. All the connections are
made, all the identities revealed. As a twist, the two Antipholuses begin
to brawl, as brothers sometimes do. On stage it is brief and it is funny.
In my mind, it is smart. The text leaves these brothers unaffected by their
reunion - more interested in love and assets than in embracing one another
in joy. This is contrary to the loving reunion of the Dromios, who are in
respectful awe of one another, both in Shakespeare's text, and on Dunn's
stage. By making the Antipholus brothers affected, Dunn once again diverts
attention from the idea of tragedy. His boys act the part of brothers.
They are affected by one another's presence, even if the affectation takes
the form of rivalry. This ending is far easier to swallow than Shakespeare's
unemotional reunion, and it works for Dunn in the end.
The Marin Shakespeare Company's production of The Comedy of Errors, directed by James Dunn, is being preformed at San Rafael's Forest Meadows
Amphitheatre through September 24, 2006. Visit www.marinshakespeare.org for
more information.
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Sir John Gilbert, R.A.,
Comedy of Errors
Reviews
|  | Royal Shakespeare Company
July 11, 2009 |  | Midsummer Festival
June 27, 2008 | | CAP 21
April 12, 2008 |  | Stratford Festival of Canada
August 4, 2007 |  | Marin Shakespeare Company
September 9, 2006 |  | Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
August 1, 2006 |  | The Shakespeare Festival
July 23, 2006 |  | Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
July 16, 2005 |  | Bomb-Itty of Errors
2002 |  | Shakespeare Repertory
1997 | | BBC
1954 |
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