A Shakespearean comedy with too many errors
Imagine if you and your servant arrived in a strange city only to find that everyone there knew you by name; who are these people who invite you to dinner, hang jewelry around your neck, and know all your business? This is the plot of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, the current production of the Classical Acting Academy of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.
Imagine if you and your servant arrived in a strange city only to find that everyone there knew you by name; who are these people who invite you to dinner, hang jewelry around your neck, and know all your business? This is the plot of Shakespeare's
The Comedy of Errors
, the current production of the Classical Acting Academy of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.
The academy gave us last summer's brilliant and charming Henry V, showing what talented young actors can do with a few weeks of intensive training under the guidance of an imaginative director.
Alas, not to mention alack: This summer's production of The Comedy of Errors is embarrassingly amateurish and painfully dull. Everyone speaks very slowly and rhythmically, as if they had memorized a foreign language they did not understand, except they speak that foreign language with Philadelphia accents and occasionally lapse into teenage uptalk.
The play's premise is ridiculous: Two sets of identical twins are separated in infancy during a shipwreck. Their sameness is doubled by their having identical names. One Antipholus (Aaron Lofton) and his servant Dromio (Robin Stift) arrive from Syracuse; the other Antipholus (Keith Wallace) and his servant Dromio (Daniel Harward) live in Ephesus.
There is a wife (Rose Fairley) and her sister (Amy-Helene Carlson) and a slew of other characters whose main purpose is to complicate the mistaking of identities and compound the errors.
This existential nightmare ("Am I myself?" Dromio asks) is a farce with edge. Serving both the goofiness and the darkness of the comedy requires speed and style, both notably lacking under Rosemary Hay's incoherent direction.
The set design (by Alexander Petit Olivieri) with its Turkish posters and its twinkle lights, combined with silly sound effects, Keystone Kops chases, and vulgar, unidentifiable costumes, creates confused nonsense - which is not the same thing as comedy.
The Comedy of Errors
Through Aug. 21 at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, 2111 Sansom St. Free. Tickets only at box office. Information: phillyshakespeare.org.EndText