The Comedy of Errors

Comedy is comedy, whether it springs from the singular brow of William Shakespeare or the collective ones of Curly, Larry and Moe.

And nowhere is that more apparent than in director Jim Helsinger's staging of The Comedy of Errors, the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's opening production in its spring season at Lake Eola Park.

If you think the highfalutin Bard of Avon has nothing in common with the Three Stooges, the evidence to the contrary is right before your eyes.

Like most former 12-year-old boys, Helsinger has a soft spot for rubber chickens, and for bodily functions, and for high-speed chases of nearly any kind. That all of this comes together in the service of Shakespeare is all the proof you need that comedy hasn't changed a lot in 400 years. When somebody says, "The pig falls from the spit," why, of course he's going to spit in somebody else's eye.

Helsinger is in his element with The Comedy of Errors, one of Shakespeare's earliest comedies and certainly the silliest and easiest to understand. This show is down-and-dirty farce, with identical twins, mistaken identities and all the confusion that comes with the package. It's a perfect repository for physical-comedy shtick, whether it comes from 16th-century Italian commedia dell' arte or from 20th-century American vaudeville. The gleeful effect is the same.

 In fact, Shakespeare took his inspiration for The Comedy of Errors from another time and place -- the Rome of the third century B.C. and Plautus' comedy The Menaechmi. Shakespeare compounded the comedy by giving Plautus' set of identical twin brothers a set of identical twin servants, both sets of which were separated as babies in a shipwreck. One Antipholus and his servant Dromio grew up in the Roman outpost of Syracuse; the other Antipholus and his man Dromio were raised in Ephesus, in Asia Minor. When the first pair goes looking for the second, complications ensue.

The Shakespeare festival's designers have played up the exoticism of ancient Ephesus: Bob Phillips has added vibrant color and intricate decoration to his classically columned set (which also will serve as the setting for an Edwardian Love's Labour's Lost); Jack Smith's rich costumes are bedecked with jewels and fringe; and Eric T. Haugen's lighting drenches the stage in hot oranges and pinks. Kelly Collins' marketplace music gives Ephesus a strange, witchy feel.

But the people who live in this setting, and those who find themselves within it, are altogether familiar to theatergoers in the year 2000 -- the goldsmith (Richard Toth) who sounds like a guy selling used cars just off the Long Island Expressway; the Arab merchant (Richard Width) who, with his shoe-polish black goatee and his cultured accent, resembles the kind of bad guy who gets offed by Indiana Jones. Michael Dressel's hilarious Doctor Pinch, an interfering schoolmaster in the script, is dressed up as a mad scientist, with extravagant headgear and that rubber chicken hanging out of his pocket; his guttural consonants sound as if they produce enough phlegm to threaten the first several rows.

In this atmosphere, Rik Walter's newly arrived Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Eric Hissom's Dromio, come across like the most classical of dupes, 

the open-faced guys in any farce who can't figure out what's going on. Walter's Antipholus is a down-to-earth kind of guy -- he speaks Shakespeare so colloquially that it sounds like American English -- but the circumstances bring out a certain testiness. Even the elaborate hand gestures with which the Ephesians greet each other are fodder for his sarcasm.

And Hissom's Dromio is that quintessential serving-man who is too clever by half. He turns a simple explanation of what has happened to Antipholus into a game of charades, and his description of the kitchen wench who is after him becomes inflated into an impersonation of Dr. Frankenstein's favorite son (a nod to Hissom's role in an earlier festival production).

Just about everybody in this production brings that kind of spark to their roles, whether it's Warren Kelley's peevish Antipholus of Ephesus, an entirely reasonable man whose whole city seems to have turned against him, or David Haugen's simpleminded Dromio of Ephesus. Jean Tafler, one of the merry wives in 1997's The Merry Wives of Windsor, makes a larger-than-life fury of Adriana, the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, a fierce sprite of a woman who is entirely too capable with a carving knife. Mindy Anders is the perfect ingenue as Luciana, Adriana's sister, the single miss who lectures her sibling on married life.

The gaunt, lanky David Snizek is appropriately guileless as the doomed Aegeon, an old man whose fate is caught up with the two Antipholus brothers, and the very small Holly Haire -- who looks a stitch next to Snizek because of their wildly varying heights -- makes a feisty, frightening little abbess.

The subplot involving Aegeon and the abbess still hangs a little peculiarly on this play: It's strange to see a comedy begin so somberly, no matter how skillfully Helsinger has staged the show's first scene, and their final reconciliation is over in a flash.

But the fact is that all of this crazy little show speeds by, if as somebody were backstage throwing the actors full-force onto the set or somebody else were chasing them onstage with a very large swordfish. That swordfish does figure into the action, and so do a host of other shenanigans that the resourceful Helsinger and his actors seemed to have lifted from Abbott and Costello and Adam Sandler.

After all, comedy is comedy. There may be nothing new under the sun (except a sun that jerks across the sky like the hour hand of a malfunctioning clock). But the joy of The Comedy of Errors, like that of every great comedy, is that it feels as if they're making it up as they go along. 

Much credit should be given to the show's director, Jim Helsinger, the Festival's Artistic Director. He has instructed his cast and crew to go for the comedic jugular, which they do so with relish. But he also has given them the freedom to work some improvised magic on their own, which adds a deeper, more personable and modern nature to the performance.

For example, consider the many times the action stops so an actor can comment on the hair loss of an audience member. Or the chase scenes, which always seem to involve the crowd in some way -- including one that plows through two separate rows of people before returning to the stage. Or the segment in which a servant explains to his master the rotund nature of a woman by comparing her to the largest globe ever created -- complete with pantomimed examples. Or the moment where two buffoons, trapped on opposite sides of a locked door, fart on the door for approximately ten minutes and they grow more and more involved in their actions with each passing second (no pun intended).

And these moments don't even begin to touch on the great screwball comedy supplied by the talented cast. Every actor realizes the gold mine of comedic possibilities in The Comedy of Errors and wastes no opportunity to reach the best possible punchline.

Of course, there's much more going on in the play than jokes about flatulence and obesity. The Comedy of Errors works its magic around the belief that identical twins can be mistaken for one another by anyone. To develop this idea, Shakespeare presents us with two sets of identical twins: Antipholus of Ephesus (A.E.) and Antipholus of Syracuse (A.S.) and their twin servants, Dromio of Ephesus (D.E.) and Dromio of Syracuse (D.S.).

At the start of the play, we learn through a captured man, Aegeon, that a shipwreck has separated his family, which includes all of the aforementioned characters, as well as his wife, Emilia. He has come to Ephesus in search of his loved ones, but he is arrested for trespassing.

At the same time, A.S. and D.S. arrive in Ephesus for business.

Almost immediately, several members of the town, including A.E.'s wife, Adriana, her sister, Luciana, a courtesan and a goldsmith, confuse them for their counterparts. When the real

The cast works some true comic magic with their roles. Not only do they react with precision to the events, but they create whole, likeable personalities out of the mayhem. The Dromios (David Haugen, Ephesus, and Eric Hissom, Syracuse) bring great physicality to their roles, particularly in the ways they seem to savor their childish behavior or more mature methods of reason. Haugen comes across like a cross between Curly Howard and Wallace Shawn, with a mastery of body language and expression. Meanwhile, Hissom makes his character a frenetic fool who grows more frenzied as the play progresses.

As the two Antipholuses, Warren Kelly (Ephesus) and Rik Walter (Syracuse) balance each other well, and each over-the-top reaction they give to the pandemonium evolving around them seems to top their previous. Also, it's interesting to note how one cannot believe the good fortune his mistaken identity has created for him while the other gets lost trying to understand why all he has worked for and established in Ephesus has suddenly vanished.

The supporting players, including a string of merchants, artisans, courtesans, royalty, family members and passers-by, all do great work in adding to the comedic havoc. This reporter's favorites include the goldsmith, who holds a sharp New York accent reminiscent to Shecky Green, and the servant charging at everyone with a stuffed marlin (???).

One of the finest performances in the show is by Jean Tafler, who plays Adriana, wife of A.E.. As she lets her womanhood get the best of her, a result of the mistaken identities, she achieves pure madcap bliss, particularly through her vocal inflections, body language and natural delivery. The results of these efforts further her appeal to the audience as the play progresses.

Bob Phillips' set creates a stately, heavenly feel for the audience -- all the better considering the trashing it takes through the performance. Eric T. Haugen's lights get distilled some by the outdoor setting but still prove effective, particularly in the gag involving the quickly setting sun. The same can be said of Paul Lartonoix and Kelly Collins' sound, which at times proves a little thick. Jack Smith's costumes take you back in time and offer you sights silly enough to make you laugh upon first glance. An all around fine comedic performance.

Pictured: David Haugen, Warren Kelly, 
Rick Walters & Eric Hissom

That Jim Helsinger is a master of frenetic farce and the comic bits of commedia dell'arte is not news to anyone who has followed the Orlando theater scene for long. The director of the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival and the director of its current production provides all the hilarity you would expect, and more.

"The Comedy of Errors" is not the whimsical trifle of an apprentice playwright that many coroners of literary vivisection have pronounced. This compact comedy, modeled after Plautus' Roman comedies, has a dark grounding that allows the characters to brightly flash forth with a humanistic vitality previously unknown in English drama. Shakespeare's youthful richness, and the glimpse of the genius to come, is fully revealed in what is Helsinger's finest work to date. "The Comedy of Errors'" conceptualization is seamless from the smallest detail of makeup to the expansive sweep of the design.

This nimble comedy of mistaken identity begins with gloom; the elder Aegeon, a Syracusian by birth, is condemned to death by Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, unless a hefty ransom is delivered before sunset. The ill-fated prisoner tells of the shipwreck that years ago separated his twin sons, their twin servants and his wife. His sentence is this sword of Damocles that hangs over the comedy to its improbable but happy conclusion. One of the lost sons, now Antipholus of Syracuse, arrives with his servant, Dromio. Unbeknownst to them the other surviving pair of twins live in Ephesus. Thus begins the series of errors resulting in jealousy, lust, fool's errands, financial lurches and madcap chases.

The essential illusionary costuming and makeup are ingeniously rendered by Jack Smith's blend of tropical antiquity aided by clever individualized eye makeup. Kelly Collin's music is a delightful mix of Middle Eastern timbres and Mack Sennett rhythms. To quibble slightly, I would lose the incongruous masks stage left and right, and the mix of voice and music needs a nod to the actors.

The actors also meld in the holistic vision, with the delightfully matched comic wit of David Haugen and the ever-incomparable Eric Hissom as the servant twins, as well as the engaging playfulness of Rik Walter and the Sid Caesar-like clowning of Warren Kelly as the master twins.

The staging reveals a thorough grasp of the comedy's nuances. Water plays an important symbolic role and is ad-dressed in Antipholus from Syracuse's direct metaphor: "I to the world am like a drop of water/That in the ocean seeks another drop." Even during the chase scenes around a fountain, the characters pause to refresh, hide in or mimic becoming the fountain itself.

All life is liquid -- that is the vital humanism of "A Comedy of Errors," set against a death sentence and the fact of bondage in servitude and in relationships. Helsinger offers a masterful telling of this splendid work; in its seaport we glimpse the stormy coasts and the regenerative themes of reunion, redemption and rebirth in Shakespeare's late masterworks.

"The Comedy of Errors," the play that the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival opened Friday evening in the Walt Disney Amphitheater at Lake Eola Park in Orlando, is just that funny. It's set in ancient Greece, but its humor is broad and its story is so full of twists and bawdy jokes that it outshines today's top sitcoms.

Two sets of twins - masters and servants - were separated as infants, and grew up not knowing about each other. Raised in different towns but with the same names - Antipholus (Warren Kelley from Ephesus and Rik Walter from Syracuse), the master; Dromio (David Haugen from Ephesus and Eric Hissom from Syracuse), the servant - they run into each other one fine day.

All sort of trouble ensues, until it's almost impossible to keep track of who's who. The Syracuse men arrive in Ephesus and are constantly mistaken for one another. The list is too long to follow in a rational way. There are Antipholus of Ephesus' wickedly shrewish wife Adriana (Jean Tafler), a craven goldsmith (Richard Toth), the jailer (Arik Basso) and, most alarmingly, creepy Dr. Pinch (Michael Dressel), in his weird Merlin costume.

The amazing hilarity of Orlando-UCF Shakespeare's terrific "Comedy of Errors" comes not just from the script, or even just from the talented actors and director (Jim Helsinger, the company's artistic director), or the delightful scenic design (by Bob Phillips) and colorful costumes (by Jack Smith). It's due to all that, 

Let's face it: Shakespeare wrote plays a long time ago and they're still affecting audiences. That's not because high school English literature teachers forced them on students; quite the contrary. It's because Shakespeare's tragedies are really sad, and the comedies are really funny - but only when they're presented as living, accessible writing and not as "classics," sacred relics of theater.

It's very much to the Orlando festival's credit that its Shakespeare doesn't just amuse - it busts a gut, breaks a leg, throws a rubber chicken around - literally and until it exhausts the visual pun that had everyone in the audience, from grade-schoolers to balding suits, howling.

What a night, what a play. The wife shrieks at the not-husband, as the real husband cavorts with a harem girl. The master beats his servant, who whines to the audience, a crew of confused people - jewelers, conjurers, dancing girls, merchants carrying huge, whole fish - run in and out of the amphitheater's aisles. It's bedlam, it's archaic English that somehow can be understood perfectly; it's the essence of wit and illusion: "Comedy of Errors" is a laugh riot.

"The Comedy of Errors," the first of two companion productions that continues with the April 7 opening of the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's "Love's Labour's Lost," runs through May 6 at the Walt Disney Amphitheater in downtown Orlando. Performances are Thursday and Sunday at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, $7-$35, call (407) 893-4600, Ext. 1.

In other words, take the kids.

They should laugh as loudly as you at watching confusion reign when two pairs of twins getting confused for one another; a hugely fat and horridly ugly cook running after her skinny husband yelling "Give us a kiss''; a slide whistle heralding the sun's movement in the sky; offstage sounds of wailing cats and bellowing cows; and enough slap-schtick to make Mel Brooks blush.

One of Shakespeare's earlier plays, reportedly written in 1592-93, "The Comedy of Errors'' is a relatively short play, about two hours.

It opens in Ephesus, a city in ancient Greece. Aegeon, an old Syracusian merchant condemned to death, tells the story of how his infant twin sons, both named Antipholus and now grown, were separated during a fierce storm at sea. One son is rescued by a ship from Ephesus, another is rescued by a ship from Syracuse.

The two Antipholuses, along with another set of twins, both named Dromio and now servants to the Antipholuses, were separated in the same storm. The foursome end up meeting in Ephesus, one at a time and in various combinations so they do not know they are speaking with twins.

Servants get mixed up with masters, one man is mistaken for the husband of a domineering woman, a bag of gold is diverted and chaos ensues.

Bob Phillips' beautiful neoclassic scenic design uses marble columns, statuary and fire to recreate a temple. Quick scenic shifts by cast members turn the temple into a marketplace awash with lavenders, pinks, greens, mauves and more. Striped awnings sprout over baskets overflowing with ripe green and purple grapes.

Supporting the design concept of saturated, cartoon hues, costume designer Jack Smith lavishes the stage with a gaudy burgundy dress with gold braid for Adriana (wife to Antipholus of Ephesus) and magnificent diaphanous blue gowns for the courtesan and Luciana (Adriana's sister and the sudden love interest for Antipholus of Syracuse). Smith also has designed a drop-dead hysterical assemblage of gadgets and magnifying glasses in "Ghostbusters'' fashion for Dr. Pinch, summoned to "exorcise'' demons from Antipholus of Ephesus, mistaken for Antipholus of Syracus, who is mistaken for Antipholus of Ephesus.

And that's just the visuals.

Add to this uninhibited direction by Jim Helsinger, who repeatedly delights Shakespeare audiences with high concepts, artistic interpretations and quick-paced productions.

Characters run up and down aisles. A chase worthy of a Marx Brothers movie includes a running swordfish gag while characters go in one door, out the next. There are enough sight gags to make you want to see the show again to catch what you missed the first time.

Helsinger's cast is one of the best yet to perform at the outdoor event. Actors keep the timing tight and seem pretty happy to go over the top to entertain the masses.

The two Antipholuses -- Warren Kelley and Rik Walter -- and the two Dromios -- David Haugen and Eric Hissom -- are excellent. They tirelessly keep the double-take, pratfall quality to the show.

There are many very funny parts to the show. Funniest is when Walter and Hissom (the Syracusian pair) describe a woman so large that she is like the globe and you "could find countries in her.''

But the show is not to be just for the male actors. In a hysterical performance, Jean Tafler wrings every drop of frustration and madness out of the brash Adriana.
Other standout performances are delivered by David Snizek as a most sympathetic Aegeon and Holly Haire as Emilia, the stalwart abbess of Ephesus and Aegeon's long-lost wife, and Mindy Anders as the sweet and innocent Luciana.

With shows like the delightfully daffy "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shakspr (abridged),'' and "The Complete History of America (abridged),'' the professional Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival has honed its over-the-top comedic talents. So, too, has the festival consistently been hitting the bull's-eye on production values, which includes scenery, costumes, lighting, props and set dressing.

Scaled down, but equally satisfying productions such as "Macbeth'' and "Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus'' have been a visual artist's challenge in the company's smaller, 130-seat indoor theater in the headquarters at the former Orange County Historical Museum in Loch Haven Park.

Now, though, the talents, both performance and scenic/costume, are let loose in this deliriously funny production of "The Comedy of Errors.'' This is a delight for contemporary audiences and a surprise for those who think, quite mistakenly, that Shakespeare just isn't any darn fun.