Lenox — After laughing my way through “The Money Dance” rehearsal for Shakespeare & Company’s “Comedy of Errors,” I could see why this early Shakespeare play was originally performed as a Christmas revel, complete with a Lord of Misrule. As most of us know from seeing high school productions, it’s a wild situational farce involving mistaken identity, twin masters and servants, sisters in love, and lots of slapstick. In 1595, the very young playwright lifted the plot from at least two old Roman plays, melded them, and made the result his own. Although it was an initial flop at The Inns of Court, it eventually became very popular in his day. Yet when we met after the rehearsal, four of today’s exuberant cast members insisted, “ ‘Comedy of Errors’ hasn’t been done right for four hundred years! Well, at least two hundred. We’re doing it right!”
Say what you will about other productions, this current one really “gets its wacky on,” as its New York-based director, Taibe Magar, a graduate of the Brown/Trinity MFA program and Lincoln Center Director’s Lab said. She has come up with rollicking embellishments like having the courtesan with a taste for clanking gold jewelry constantly chew gum and wear some of the highest platform shoes I’ve ever seen. There’s a billboard, confetti, one character who spends the entire play on roller skates…. I won’t tell all of the surprises, but I can tell you Kelley Curran, “Comedy’s” angry Adriana had the idea of giving all the players New Jersey accents and it stuck — with hilarious results.
“It’s vaudeville before vaudeville, the Marx Brothers before the Marx Brothers,” Dromio of Ephesus — or was it Dromio of Syracuse — anyway, Aaron Bartz said. One of the Antipholuses, Ian Lassiter, added that he finds it delicious that the audience knows more than any of the characters, and must be thinking, “When are those Bozos on stage going to catch on!” Maybe so, but I was already delightedly confused. Part of the fun is the double casting of both sets of twins. In the midst of everything, the identity confusion, antiquated social norms, and rampant materialism –- not to mention surprising flashes of poetry — are pure Shakespeare!
We will see a number of old friends in the twelve member cast: Malcolm Ingram (Egeon), Josh Aaron McCabe (Dr. Pinch and the Duke), Christianna Nelson (the Abbess), Douglas Seldin (Luce and the Ensemble) and Michael F. Toomey (Angelo) besides the play’s sisters, Kelley Curran (Adriana) and Cloteal L. Horne (Luciana). But there are exciting newcomers, too: Aaron Bartz (the Dromios), Ben Chase (Officer and the Ensemble), Jenelle Chu (the Courtesan), Daniel Rios Jr. (a Merchant and the Ensemble), and Ian Lassiter (the Antipholuses). I didn’t get to meet the choreographer Jesse Perez, but the wit and precision of his work jumped out (pun intended) at me in the money scene, and made me want to see more. Perez was also brought to Lenox by Taibe Magar. “This is a play about eliciting joy,” she said. “Joy and Jesse both begin with the letter J.”
Photo by Enrico Spada.
Cloteal J. Horne who plays Luciana, the smug, conventional sister spouts the famous speech counseling Adriana to quietly accept the double standards of the day. She tells me she has wrestled with the meaning of that speech and her role.”Luciana hasn’t got many lines, but they’re important. And she uses lots of body language. She begins by thinking she knows everything, falls in love with someone she thinks is inappropriate, and when she won’t give up her feelings for him anyway, she discovers that she doesn’t know much of anything. Her story has the greatest arc in the play.”
The director and her cast grew serious before we parted. They discussed the implications of having your identity imposed by others, of being treated as if you’re someone else. “Comedy of Errors” is great fun, but there are things to think about; there are lessons to be learned. It examines human deception and self-deception. And in the end, Taibe Magar said, “The main point of this play is love and the reunion of family.” If you want to be set on your ear this summer in the very best of ways, you’ll round up your family and friends and go to the Tina Packer Playhouse at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox to watch it all play out. Maybe you can discover why that tall young man wears roller skates — or maybe not.
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Comedy of Errors plays from July 2 through August 23 at the Tina Packer Playhouse on the campus of Shakespeare & Company. For schedules and tickets, consult the Berkshire Edge calendar, call the box office at 413-637-3353 , or go online to www.shakespeare.org.
