Warmly received last year, Sean Holmes's rumbustious production of Shakespeare’s play of confused and confusing identities is back, co-directed by Naeem Hayat and with a largely new cast.
Paul Wills’s design covers the Globe’s tiring house frontage with shuttering and litters the stage with barrels to turn it into a dockside in Ephesus. There is ship’s rigging on one side of the stage and another ship's bowsprit reaches out over the heads of the groundlings (interfering with sight-lines for folk in the galleries), and a jetty into the yard provides a place where boats can dock.
The production begins with beating drums, a flourish of trumpets and a lot of flag waving that could presage a history play to bring on the Duke of Ephesus (Rhys Rusbatch) and a prisoner, merchant Egeon. Egeon (Paul Rider) comes from enemy city Syracuse; just setting foot here could cost him his life, especially if he can’t pay a fat fine in ransom.
In explaining his presence, Egeon gives the backstory telling of his identical twin sons and another pair of twins of poor parents, brought up by him to be their servants, and of the shipwreck which separated him from his wife and from one twin from each pair. His remaining son, grown-up, and his servant went off in search of their lost brothers, and Egeon has followed them in the same search.
The Duke upholds the law but gives Egeon some time to find the cash. Then, for no obvious reason, the sad scene gives place to a brawl, in which even an abbess produces a dagger, and the crazy mayhem of the play now kicks off. All these long-lost are now here in Ephesus. Here they will encounter each other, twins taken for their similar siblings.
Brother twins go by the same name: master twins Antipholus, servants Dromio. Both Antipholus dress identically, presumably following the latest fashion, and both choose to put their servants in identical livery. No one seems to notice that Sam Swan’s Ephesus Dromio has a Midlands accent, while Martin Quinn’s Dromio from Syracuse has a Scot’s lilt (but it does help the audience).
If I hadn’t know the play, I probably could not have told you which Antipholus was which, though Caleb Roberts’s Antipholus of Ephesus did display a more arrogant nature than Daniel Adeosun’s Antipholus of Syracuse, who is baffled by meeting a woman who says she’s his wife and her sister to whom he is attracted.
Gabrielle Brooks’s bossy Adriana is a match for husband Ephesian Antipholus, their relationship could spark off a new play, while Shalisha James-Davis as her sister Luciana, though somewhat bemused by her supposed brother-in-law’s attentions, does seem to have more than a flicker of interest.
However, this isn’t really a play for subtleties. It is fast-paced with some very broad playing, especially from Rhys Rusbatch’s outrageous Pinch (so different from his sonorous Duke), a nicely confused goldsmith in Christopher Logan’s Angelo in a costume that matches his calling and, as the play concludes, more seriously sober playing from Paul Ryder and Anita Reynold’s Abbess.
This Comedy of Errors is a romp played without interval that gets away with some slapstick violence that becomes part of the fun. Pace demands vocal clarity that not all this cast deliver, but nonetheless a packed house have a good time.