Theatre: The Comedy of Errors

While reviewing ‘I Malvolio’, (Tim Crouch), The Harker’s Rory Attwood complained that in “contemporary productions of Shakespeare” it’s as though “everyone there, both cast and audience, are acting at being at a play”. I couldn’t agree more. Increasingly I have found Shakespeare difficult to watch. I have felt distanced from the action, uncomfortably aware that I am performing the act of watching Shakespeare. There really should be a verb for it: to Shakespeare. “I thoroughly enjoyed Shakespearing this week”, “She Shakespeared last Sunday so might not want to tomorrow”.

The National Theatre’s new production of ‘The Comedy of Errors’, directed by Dominic Cooke, is a breath of fresh air and the best Shakespeare I’ve done in a long time. It may have helped that it is a play I don’t know well and so was completely open to enjoying the story as it came, rather than thinking, “Oh, now it’s that bit where that Horatio bloke does that thing” or “They just took out Gloucester’s eyes…never saw that one coming”. Either way, when the lights went down on the first act I didn’t want it to end, and that’s not something that happens every Shakespeare.

Cooke has set his production in what seems to be an East end gangster land. Solinus, Duke of Ephesus (Ian Burfield) is a Cray Brothers type in trench coat and scarf, complete with a tracksuited girlfriend and an unfortunately bad cockney accent. Adriana (Claudie Blakely) and Luciana (Michelle Terry), Ephesus royalty in the text, are handbag wielding, high-heel tottering Essex princesses; both gave excellent performances. Bunny Christie’s set is a dark and grimy world of revolving tower blocks; pigeons perched above, neon signs lit up the streets below.

Lenny Henry and a fantastic Chris Jarman play the separated twin brothers of the same name, Lucian Msamati and Daniel Poyser their separated twin servants, also of the same name. Henry’s Antipholus goes in search of Jarman’s Antipholus and Poyser’s Dromio with Msamati’s Dromio in tow. They all end up in Ephesus. Hilarity and sometimes downright surreality ensues.

All the madness and confusion of the play is summed up in one excellent scene where the whole company run round and round the revolving set, escaping from and searching for each other but not knowing which other is who. There was something Scooby Doo-esque about it; I was in hysterics. Add some random Romanian buskers, singing pop favourites such as ‘Mad World’ in their native language (reminiscent of Sue Jorge in ‘The Life Aquatic’) and you’re set.

The audience were enjoying themselves so much that they forgot they were Shakespearing. The suspension of disbelief that Attwood so lamented the loss of in his article seemed to be back: there was none of that “nudge nudge, wink wink, look I got a Shakespeare joke” stuff. By the end some were even heckling and many ahhhed sincerely when the brothers and family were reunited.

To Shakespeare or not to Shakespeare?

To Shakespeare.

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