The Comedy of Errors
William Shakespeare, with Modern Verse Translation by Christina Anderson
American Conservatory Theater, A Touring Production by the Acting Company
What a difference a week can make! A week ago, New York’s touring Acting Company opened at American Conservatory Theatre a must-see, poetic play of powerful prose about a turbulent, turning point period in American history (August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, part of his ten-play cycle about the Black, 20th century experience). Now, the same renowned company opens in their two-production repertory a wild and wacky The Comedy of Errors — one so full of silliness and slapstick that the iambic pentameter words of William Shakespeare take a back seat and are at times completely lost in the jiving and the street-style translation by Christina Anderson as directed by Devin Brain. The contrast is impressive as this collection of talented actors switches gears big time, but their second offering does not altogether measure up to the first as this staged comedy on steroids at times just tries too hard to get one more laugh.
Set again in the same 1960’s-style diner as Two Trains (Tanya Orellana, scenic designer), the evening opens with a raspy-voiced, near-deranged Aegean (Diana Coates) telling a harrowing tale to four, wide-eyed “lads” kneeling in front of him — two pairs of grown men with each pair dressed in identical clothes. Aegean recounts a ship-wreck where he and his wife are each separated at sea with one twin son and with one twin servant of that son. Aegean and his paired half finally land in Syracuse, and the other threesome, reportedly in Ephesus. The tale is lit by Jared Gooding as if we were watching a movie screen while Lindsay Jones’s sound design is one filled with mighty claps of thunder, a ship’s breaking into pieces, and music from a 1930’s adventure movie.
After the stage clears during a black-out, a twosome crawls out from behind the diner’s jukebox, as the snazzy-dressed Antipholus of Syracuse (Jame Ricardo Milord) and his loyal servant and sidekick Dromio (Chuckie Benson) arrive in the arch enemy territory of Ephesus looking for their long-lost, twin counterparts. (We are to believe, of course, that Ephesus is in the form of a Hill District diner in Pittsburg.)
As the the Syracuse duo roams (inside the diner) the same streets as do their duplicates — Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus (Jeffrey Rashad and J’Laney Allen, respectively) — mix-ups and misidentifications by the dozens ensue. A wife (Adriana, Deanna Supplee) ends up in bed with the wrong husband. A sister-in-law (Diana Coates again) falls heads over heels in love with whom she knows she shouldn’t. A courtesan (Diana Coats, now decked in red fur) tempts one twin to bed and demands, with threat of a scandal, a promised gold chain from a bewildered other twin.
The town’s unpaid merchant, Balthazar (Diana Coats, of course) and his goldsmith buddy (yep, Deanna Supplee) seek the arrest of the wrong man by the town’s sergeant (Chuckie Benson in a new role) — a cop in a giant cowboy hat and with a drawl who looks and acts like he just walked off the screen of a Mel Brooks’ Wild West farce.
Even a Bible-thumping, revival-preacher named Pinch gets in the act to try and perform an exorcism on the chaos at hand (a hilarious Robert Cornelius).
In the meantime, unbeknownst to neither Antipholus of S nor of E, his never-seen-since-birth father (Michael J. Asberry) is about to be executed; and his long-lost mother is the town’s head priestess hidden away in the main square’s temple (Robert Cornelius, this time as a sidesplittingly funny, giant nun).
The multiple shifts in roles sometimes occur as the air is split by a sound like a needle scraping across an revolving record (remember that sound when we once all had record players). All action then stops as those on stage swap outfits, wigs, hats, etc. to take on new roles. All frantic-paced action is accompanied by a lot of purposeful, over-the-top acting; and there is much back-slapping, high-fiving, and physical teasing and bantering that is an almost constant between the right and the wrong pairs of twins.
The result is ninety minutes of fun and fury that resembles a mixture of Shakespeare’s original intent, a Vaudeville act, kids’ cartoons, and a TV-sitcom comedy. Any production of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is likely to be filled with exaggerated hilarity. The Acting Company goes a few steps further in their touring version, turning ACT’s Toni Rembe Theatre into a Pittsburg-turned-Ephesus diner that is full of mad-dash chases and madcap mix-ups.
Rating: 3.5 E
The Comedy of Errors continues through May 3, 2025, in a niney-minute (no intermission) touring production by Acting Company at American Conservatory Theatre, the Toni Rembe Theatre, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online at https://www.act-sf.org, by phone at 415-749-2228, and by email at tickets@act-sf.org.
Photo Credits: Veronica Slavin
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