Readers who, like me, find the first few minutes of most Shakespearean plays baffling as the ear sorts out the language and the brain grapples with plot should take the spotty stage bulbs on the set of Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s The Comedy of Errors as fair warning: this production is not chiefly concerned with keeping the audience out of the dark. The Bard’s jokes and double entendres fly fast and furious without the benefit of what this company excels at, which is intelligible and helpful dramatic interpretation of archaic language. Instead, what we get in director Danny Scheie’s third production of this popular farce (he also directed it in 1988 and 1993) is a kinetic comic exercise that taps into a deeper vein of audience appreciation: the pee-your-pants-laughing vein. It’s like watching good clowns. You can’t really tell what they’re up to at first, but they pull you along on the sheer force of skill and athleticism, and before you know it you’re howling.
Scheie’s conceit—that this play is being put on by a ragtag traveling troupe, and there aren’t enough actors so they’re doubling up parts—is as smart as it is ripe for comedy. Appropriately for an anniversary season, it recalls the classic Shakespearean play-within-a-play. This version, though, is more like Mark Twain’s take on same in Huckleberry Finn, what with players in bad drag and too-small suits and speaking in twangy Southern accents. But wait, there’s more! This is a play about twins separated at birth—and not just one set of twins but two—and so the same players keep appearing onstage in nearly identical costumes but speaking in broad Bronx accents (or is that Brooklynese?). It’s the hicks of Hee Haw and the buffoons of the Borscht Belt firing off 16th-century puns, all wrapped up in a smartypants package of meta humor and physical comedy.
Those of us who would show up to watch Shakespeare Santa Cruz veteran Mike Ryan read the phone book get a welcome double dose of him as Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus. Ryan’s good; with the single costume adjustment of donning or removing thick-framed glasses, he transforms himself from Southern rube into Northern cad. The same goes for the hilarious Brad DePlanche as the servants Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus, who strobes between simpleminded hick and regular working class guy with the simple addition of his own chunky spectacles. Several rapid-fire character-switching sequences allow both these very funny actors to flex their comic brawn, and on opening night the audience lost it.
All the actors, in fact, are strong (boring but true). SSC newcomer Joan Mankin, who teaches clowning in San Francisco, gives several excellent comic performances. Beethovan Oden likewise delivers multiple characters, including the preening, high-heeled Courtesan, and has one of the funniest bits of physical comedy in the play during his own character-switching sequence. Susan Engbrecht’s furious disrespected wife is a strong presence throughout, and Carly Cioffi as her dingbat dish of a sister is very funny indeed. The husky Brad Myers in four separate roles, including a classic drag part as the abbess, performs ably and probably got one of the biggest laughs of the night. And last but not least, one-man band (and jailer and officer, as needed) Jonathan Shue is right on cue with musical flourishes. It’s a zany, madcap night of lowbrow humor in a highbrow venue that leaves us in a great place: right in the middle, doubled over with laughter.
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
Through Aug. 28
UCSC Mainstage
Tickets $14-50 at shakespearesantacruz.org or 831.459.2159.
