‘The Comedy of Errors’

Play review


NOW PLAYING–Dale Adrion is The Jailor, Rebekah Brockman is Luciana and Jaromb Brown is The Second Jailor in the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company’s production of “The Comedy of Errors.”

NOW PLAYING–Dale Adrion is The Jailor, Rebekah Brockman is Luciana and Jaromb Brown is The Second Jailor in the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company’s production of “The Comedy of Errors.”

The Kingsmen Shakespeare Company kicks off its 2010 summer season with a presentation of “The Comedy of Errors,” one of William Shakespeare’s earliest works.

First performed in 1594, the play is the Bard’s shortest. The story—a comedy about two pairs of twins separated at birth—was lifted from an ancient Roman comedy called “Menaechmi.”

The light entertainment was perfectly suited for the Fourth of July weekend and the Kingsmen of CLU delivered its own dazzling and incendiary exercise in comedic mayhem.

Director Kevin P. Kern incorporated a few modern devices, including a herald trumpeting the theme from “Superman” and Matthew Henerson’s portrayal of the goldsmith Angelo with a broad Bronx accent.

One set of twins, born to a merchant, is named Antipholus and the other set, born to a poor woman, is named Dromio. One Antipholus and servant Dromio is from Syracuse; the other duo is from Ephesus.

Antipholus of Syracuse (Ross Hellwig) is traveling the world with Dromio of Syracuse (Will Shupe), in search of his long-lost brother and mother. Hellwig plays his role beautifully, with his bewilderment growing as he is mistaken by his brother’s wife and household for Antipholus of Ephesus.

Shupe is a flesh-and-blood cartoon character, a master of dialect and a pratfalling genius. His description of his homely wife in Act I is the stuff of stand-up Borscht Belt comics. Nimble, acrobatic, and screamingly funny, Shupe tumbles, darts about, runs into stationary objects and shrieks like a wild animal.

None of this manic behavior is out of character for Dromio, who is one of Shakespeare’s looniest creatures. Not far off is his equally crazed brother, Dromio of Ephesus, played by Eric Bloom.

One of the highlights of the play is Shupe and Bloom’s perfectly executed mirror routine, an anachronistic steal from the Marx Brothers’ 1930s film “Duck Soup.”

The household of Antipholus of Ephesus includes Adriana, Antipholus’ wife, played by Amber Bonasso, and her spinster sister, Luciana, played by Rebekah Brockman. When Antipholus of Syracuse is mistaken for his brother, Adriana locks her real husband out of their house while the imposter makes a play for the sister. In the best tradition of knockabout drawing room comedy, Bonasso and Brockman are wellbalanced in their respective roles.

The funniest scene in a play chockfull of hilarity is the elaborately choreographed sword fight in Act II that plays out like a Daffy Duck/Elmer Fudd cartoon.

Others in the stylish cast include John Herzog as Egeon and Marc Silver as Duke Solinus. The multitiered set allows for much cavorting, appearing and disappearing of characters.

The characters extend their screwball behavior into the audience, dragging a small boy on stage to be briefly used as a prop and running up and down the aisles. The play is filled with other hilarious small touches, such as when one of the Antipholus brothers, searching for his servant, screams out, “Dromio, Dromio, wherefore art thou, Dromio!”

“The Comedy of Errors” continues through July 18. Visit www.kingsmenshakespeare.org for tickets or call (805) 493-3455.

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