REVIEW: Comedy of Errors a masterclass of mayhem
The Freewill Players launch their 35th outdoor season in Hawrelak Park this year with one of Shakespeare’s earliest and funniest plays, Comedy of Errors.
It’s hard to imagine a better show for a spring evening than this venerable confection – an entertaining show as light as a breeze across Hawrelak Lake. It is, by the Bard’s design, and help from Edmonton director Dave Horak, a fertile (if silly) brew of breathless Keystone comedy chases, and burlesque gags that were a millennium old when the playwright borrowed them from the Greeks – all frizzled with raunchy jokes and bawdy puns that broke up Elizabethan audiences. And then, there’s the classic mistaken identity plot that demands a suspension of belief of awesome proportions.
The concoction has (if this sprightly production is any example) stood the test of time. In fact, the play is regarded by many as one of the most beautifully-crafted farces ever written.
Reviving a convoluted 500-year-old comedy has its problems – which Horak circumvents by judicious editing, a vigorous directing flourish and locating a happy balance between modern and venerable conventions. If you are willing to surrender to the Director’s multi-pleasure, riotously shameless production, you will indeed be rewarded. And any show that begins in the 1920s with Hooray for Hollywood can’t be all bad.
That’s followed by a Keystone Cops routine as the hapless cops chase Egeon (Troy O’Donnell), who is the first to speak – as is only right, because the still active O’Donnell was one of the first to speak 35 years ago in the company’s initial production. At any moment in Horak’s madcap show, the cast may burst into song or combust into an old-fashioned Western movie chase. Or perhaps a Bette Davis weepie. The Seven Dwarfs show up as does (briefly) Snow White. Hamlet, in a flagrant plug for the following night’s show, walks through a crowd scene, contemplating Yorick’s skull.
While digesting this stew of old-time cultural references you might also note that you are seeing a gender-balanced production in which the ladies – God bless ’em – take roles that have traditionally been played by men. Horak has given two of his leads, Belinda Cornish (Antipholus of Ephesus) and Kristi Hansen (Antipholus of Syracuse), drawn-on, pencil-thin, Errol Flynn moustaches. And devilishly handsome rogues they are. Drag, of course, is a requirement.
To double our pleasure, the wily playwright gives us not just one set of twins – but two. Egeon has illegally entered Ephesus and so is condemned to death. (Like some today, those early Greeks didn’t fool around with illegal immigration either.) Brought before Duke Solinus (a lisping Kevin Sutley), he spins a tale of misfortune – he was shipwrecked while sailing with his wife and (wait for it….) twin sons, both named Antipholus. If that’s not confusing enough, there are twin servants, both named Dromio (Ashley Wright and Robert Benz). The two rude domestics are so funny together (and apart) I wouldn’t be surprised if they set off after the show on a vaudevillian tour of church basements in Eastern Canada.
Solinus is touched by the old guy’s sad tale and postpones his sentence until night fall. The rest of the plot beggars description – so I won’t try, but much merriment follows.
All of this may sound a bit ridiculous – but ridiculous is the stuff of the play. In fact, given Horak’s resourcefulness and puckish sense of humour, the twin conceits of old movie tropes and reverse gender casting work extremely well.
In this, the director is aided by a supple, experienced cast of farceurs who seem perfectly at home with both verbal and physical comedy as well as a confident delivery of double-entendre and blank verse. The broad performances are universally good and sometimes reach inspired heights of comic inventiveness. To single out any performance would be a disservice to such a collectively accomplished troupe. I’m not sure if everything works but enough does to keep you laughing for most of the time (and chuckling the rest).
What a great re-introduction to the Bardic oeuvre this show would be to those who turned their back on Shakespeare after a bad experience in high school – or for mature kids old enough to figure out who’s doing what to whom.
What Horak has created here is a merrie-masterclass in mayhem. There is not much grist and for those looking for intellectual content – you’ll have to wait for the next night which brings Hamlet to the outdoor stage. What you will get is what the playwright meant to deliver back in 1594 when he wrote it – a good laugh.
And it ends in a genuine, authentic Elizabethan ditty by Cole Porter.
Comedy of Errors, a production of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival plays on odd dates – and Sunday matinees (with Hamlet featured on even dates) in the Heritage Amphitheatre of Hawrelak Park through July 15.
