THE COMEDY OF ERRORS - CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

If you love the energy and clowning of the Keystone Cops, you may love this production of ‘Comedy of Errors’. But if you’re a fan of Shakespeare’s well-crafted, supremely silly farce, then you may have doubts. This reviewer is in the second category and found the high-octane shenanigans wearisome especially in the second half. Of course there are the lovely gardens – in this case St John’s College – and (if you remember) the hamper of goodies. But these did little to raise my spirits in this commedia of errors.

Let’s though start with the positives. The 10-strong cast gave everything they had in this non-stop turbulent production. There was a very good fun opening as the plot is explained by the merchant Balthazar (David France) against some clever stuff with half puppets and a ship’s mast. It is beyond this critic’s pay grade (£0) to try to explain it all but suffice to say there are two sets of identical twins each of which has the same name – Dromio, the servants and Antipholus, the masters. They are lost then refound after a shipwreck and the two pairs wander around Ephesus without meeting each other but causing utter confusion in their wake.

Thus Adrianna, the wife of one Antipholus gets horribly confused as the ‘wrong’ one comes into her life, ditto the two Dromios. Moa Myerson does a great job as the increasingly hysterical wife (and who can blame her). Lawrence Howard provided much needed ballast as the ‘foreign’ Antipholus who keeps berating the ‘wrong’ Dromio for not carrying out his orders. Similarly his twin counterpart was portrayed with increasing craziness by Ben Aarons. The two servants were played by Alice Kellar and Jane Maclaughlin with immense energy and verve.

Actually the entire cast put all their efforts into trying to make this complicated play come off the page. Trying too hard? There was much running amok around the gardens, slapstick chases, funny business with ropes, hiding in baskets and threatening others with frying pans and pistols. There was no let up. This is where, for me, the production fell down. Instead of relying on the Bard’s words, there was a surfeit of mayhem. Add to this some bizarre interventions that made no sense to the plot: a couple of monks having simulated sex (not I think in the original), and the weird appearance of a bear that had somehow strayed from another production of ‘Winter’s Tale’ maybe in the next college garden – who knows?

Add to this some very silly portrayals – the goldsmith who speaks like a squeaky Martian was but one daft idea. All this ‘energy’ I felt was deemed necessary to keep the audience’s attention and indeed for a 4 year—old nearby it did the trick. The trouble is that when you add so much ‘stuff’ to any play, you start not to care about the characters. So any tension needed to pull off a meeting of the ‘wrong’ twins was pretty much lost and the play seemed to have no bite. Trust in Shakespeare rather than the Keystone Cops.