Through August 18
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Saul Elkin Stage/Shakespeare in Delaware Park
By Augustine Warner
It’s the little things.
That’s Shakespeare in Delaware Park’s production of “The Comedy of Errors,” a wonderful production of one of the Bard’s best comic plays, two sets of twins, a bizarre death penalty, family history and madcap confusion.
To understand the attention to detail, you just look at Dromio and Dromio and see the costume and makeup which makes them look so much alike that it confuses everyone else in town.
That town is Ephesus, the old Greek city.
It has a quirky law, a death penalty for anyone from the competing trading city of Syracuse.
Thereby hangs a tale.
Syracuse merchant Egeon (Mike Garvey) arrives in town while his son Antipholus (Johnny Barden) and his “bondsman” Dromio (Kodi James) arrive from another direction.
Bondsman is a nice Elizabethan term for a slave.
Anyway, Egeon is caught and told he has a choice between execution or a very heavy fine.
He unloads on Solina, Duchess of Ephesus (Caitlin Baeumler Coleman), the tale of woe which brings him to the port city.
Once, long ago, he was a wealthy merchant with a wife and two sons, both named Antipholus and the Dromios.
Then, they went on a trip upon the stormy Mediterranean.
Afterwards, his wife, a son and one of the twin Dromios are gone in a stormy night upon the sea.
Now, Antipholus wants to find his twin and Egeon agrees to search the ports to find the two twins and, perhaps, his wife Emelia, knowing the risks.
The duchess agrees to give him a break and postpones the execution for a day.
The Syracusan pair of Antipholus and Dromio begin to prowl the city and run into confusion, because they don’t realize the missing twins are well known citizens in Ephesus.
So, when the Ephesian Dromio (Kevin Craig) drags the Syracusan Antipholus to dinner, neither understands what’s going on but when wife Adriana (Sandra Roberts) wants to get together in bed, why should he object.
That’s even though Antipholus is more interested in the wife’s sister, Luciana (Julia Cianfrini).
The homeowner Antipholus (Connor Graham) is so angry at being denied access to his own home, he goes over to his girlfriend’s house and spends the night.
It’s this mix of basic plot and sex which makes this all work.
Of course, Shakespeare is using a plot he ripped off from Plautus’ 1,500-year-old “Menaechmi,” which is just as entertaining in the original Latin I struggled through many decades ago.
That’s two writers far apart in time but together in building a script which would entertain and support the writer.
This production does, using another fine set from David Dwyer and more good music and sound from Tom Makar, both stalwarts of Shakespeare in the park.
Director Lawrence Gregory Smith took a good cast and made the show better, Garvey’s Egeon, Dromio and Dromio (Craig and James), Roberts’Adriana, Nathanial Higgins’ Dr. Pinch and Antipholus and Antipholus (Barden and Graham).
It’s not just because it’s summer and Delaware Park is so green and you are also surrounded by the noise of a park, but because you are looking at a story which has come down to us through the ages, still poignant and still funny in the 21st Century.
See "The Comedy of Errors."
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