Simon Jenner, August 6th 2024 Daniel Adeosun, Shalisa James-Davies Photo Credit The Comedy of Errors, Globe, Marc Brenner
With the return of this 2023 production of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Sean Holmes (and now co-directed by Naeem Hayat), the 2024 Globe season concludes on the traditional note it began with Much Ado.
It wasn’t always so with Holmes, but here not only are brilliant Elizabethan costumes and textual clarity to the fore: every plot-point flashes by in a streak of neon. Not difficult when both Dromios are pea-green. With set design and gorgeous costumes again by Paul Wills, and a text without sawn-off endings, delivered clearly with detailed gesture, this is serious farce; dark and very funny.
It starts with nationalist flag-waving and a tumbrilled beheading, one head held aloft, as unhappily landed Egeon (Paul Rider, returning to the role, epitome of melancholy) seeking his sons, is put to the block. The light-voiced Duke of Ephesus (Rhys Rusbatch, playing it straighter than Philip Cumbus last year) changes gear abruptly, giving Egeus his chance to make a speech then grant him 24 hours to seek ransom. There’s an attempt to darken the palate, but it can’t last: natural madcap energy’s against it. That doesn’t mean serious themes aren’t carried though.
Themes of transaction and exchange are underscored; as well as the mistaken exchange of the two sets of identical twin brothers at the heart of this 1594 comedy. Identical twins, both called Antipholus are separated from both parents: their mother near their birth by shipwreck. And Antipholus of Ephesus, where the play’s set (Caleb Roberts, slightly austere) has never met his father. Antipholus of Syracuse (Daniel Adeosun, more ebullient, an adventurer with a quick eye) left their father seven years ago to seek his brother. They’re twinned with twin servants: Dromio of Syracuse (a sharper, dourer Martin Quinn) and Dromio of Ephesus (a more sanguine Sam Swann).
Rhys Rusbatch and Company Photo Credit The Comedy of Errors, Globe, Marc Brenner
It’s also a traditional production with Grant Olding’s beguiling score of percussion, shawms, recorders and cornett often onstage and present; alternating the thump of menace at the start with other instruments’ softer- grained interjections, edging order and harmony. The magic tricks have vanished this time, but spectral music remains with the reek of witchcraft and madness: the text’s full of an early modern obsession with both.
Shakespeare’s shortest play at 14,000 lines, here running at just 1 hour 48 (a tad shorter than 2023), it’s where he also overreaches brilliantly, bidding to outdo his original Plautus in fiendish mis-takings by conflating two of his plots. Forget improbabilities underscored by identical costumes (again reproduced here in red/gold and pea-green). It’s a virtuosic game of timing and performative expectation. It’s as much as how the characters take being mistaken, as the mistaking in the first place.
Thus Adeosun’s easy-going Antipholus of Syracuse can’t believe his luck as gold chains and bags of gold as well as an amorous wife are offered him. One thing not explored here is sex: so unlike the famous NT production of 2012, no chance he’ll wind up in bed with his mistaken wife whilst pursuing her sister. Nor that wife, realising her mistake, still able to slap her husband for sleeping with the Courtesan.
This production doesn’t preclude feeling, but again it’s braided with entitlement, purchase even. Luciana (Shalisa James-Davies) rather like Catherine’s sister Bianca in the profoundly uneasy Shrew lectures her elder on marital submission, whilst fending off what she sees as a new adulterous passion for her sister’s husband. James-Davies’s Luciana conveys – in a shimmering dark pink gown – bewilderment and loyalty, rooted to the stage.
Her sister Adriana (Gabrielle Brooks) is both more authoritative with her dealings, full of swift dispatch, but stymied when she encounters Adeosun’s easy indifference. The production underscores her marriage was an arranged, or urged one, from the Duke himself. It’s to him she appeals. Hers is a world of clear authority. Once imperilled, it’s hardly a step to summon the quack Pinch (Rusbatch again, menacing and beaten) with his sinister-beaked helpers, attempting to straitjacket her husband.
The production doesn’t stint on resounding slaps – Pinch and both Dromios, underscoring their permanent servitude. Unlike the Plautus, there’s no buying oneself from slavery here, it’s early-modern Britain. Again, we’re invited to consider just for a moment, degrees of servitude; and how that’s transmitted. Thus in a minute of amity Quinn can entertain his real master Adeosun with disparaging the fiancée he’s just encountered. “I can discover whole countries in her… she’s spherical.” Still garnering uneasy laughter, misogyny’s the currency of equality between master and slave – to a degree.
Worth and transaction is almost sculpted in the black and gold garb of goldsmith Angelo (Christopher Logan), in a role that literally carries weight. His name’s a pun on gold ‘angels’, a British coin, rather than kin to fallen Angelo in Measure for Measure. Logan playing straight lends his role gravitas.
This production’s costumes and clarity make each role tell. As First Merchant in deep-pea-green Phoebe Naughton (also returning) gives urgency to a man bound to be arrested as the Second, setting out for Persia, calls in debts. As Courtesan Naughton brings again a transactional dignity, and there’s much made of surrendering of rings (code for female sexuality) but again in a world extolling justice for right exchange. As Balthazar Naughton is an effective peacemaker where you can hear the cogs turn at the unwonted lockout of true husband Roberts, as Adeosun’s mistaken for him.
As unimpressed servant Luce, from the balcony used just in this scene, Danielle Phillips (another returnee) exudes almost pure Roman comedy dispatching interlopers at the gates. Phillips also takes the exasperated role of Second Merchant – setting off to Persia, urging the First Merchant to settle debts or menacing arrest; and Messenger, desperately warning Adriana to flee her mad husband.
Roberts’ Antipholus in this production clearly experiences the opposite of his fortunate brother; it shows. The stress of suddenly being shut out of every role and recognition allows Roberts a rage and exasperation as his world upends, the more forceful for the play allowing sense to breathe between bouts of mayhem.
It takes Abbess (Anita Reynolds, seraphic, unflustered, firm) to unfurl logic so steadily that with Rusbatch’s Duke registering each point, the denouement doesn’t sound either too abrupt or glib. Strangely the Abbess doesn’t immediately go over to her long-severed husband of 25 years back. But even here the range of recognitions tell. There’s some sly fun from Roman Hayeck-Green as an officer, and Lizzie Schenk shouting from the tumbril, sword-fighting and crashing heads.
The most intelligent Comedy of Errors I’ve seen since that NT production and truer to the play’s temper. The violence is patchy, but sketches in enough menace to explain the blows both Dromios experience almost from birth. And enough exuberance to flourish a delightful gesture between those Dromios at the end.
Daniel Adeosun, Shalisa James-Davies Photo Credit The Comedy of Errors, Globe, Marc Brenner
Musicians: Composer Grant Olding, Percussion Saleem Raman, Recorder/Cornett Tom Harrison, Recorder/Sackbut Hilary Belsey, Recorder/Shawm Emily Baines, Recorder/Shawm Sarah Humphreys
Co-Directors Sean Holmes, Naeem Hayat, Set Design Paul Wills, Movement Director Tamsin Hurtado-Clarke, Fight & Intimacy Maisie Carter
Costume Supervisors Jacquie Davies, Text Consultant Simon Trinder, Globe Associate – Movement Glynn MacDonald, Head of Voice Tess Dignan, Voice Gary Horner
Head of Stage Bryan Paterson, Head of Wigs, Hair and Make-up Gilly Church, Head of Wardrobe Emma Lucy-Hughes, Head of Company Management Marion Marrs, Head of Props Emma Hughes, Stage Manager Rob Walker, DSM Jade Hunter, ASM Georgie Pead, Casting Becky Paris. Producer Tamara Moore.
Till October 27th
The Comedy of Errors
The most intelligent Comedy of Errors I’ve seen since the NT production of 2012 and truer to the play’s temper.
Shakespeare’s Globe Stages
Shakespeare’s Globe
http://ww.shakespearesglobe.com
With the return of this 2023 production of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Sean Holmes (and now co-directed by Naeem Hayat), the 2024 Globe season concludes on the traditional note it began with Much Ado.
The most intelligent Comedy of Errors I’ve seen since the NT production of 2012 and truer to the play’s temper.
