Andrew Haydon
posted 4 August 2006

Hitherto, the Globe Theatre has rigorously sought to avoid productions which in any way look like heritage theatre. It is a surprise, then, that there is certainly a heritage-y feel to the production - not in the feared Shakespeare-industry fashion, but in its celebration of all things swinging-sixties and kitsch.

Director Christopher Luscombe has effectively set his production of The Comedy of Errors in comedy films about Rome from the 1960s. It's a neat concept, and the whole thing is so postmodern that much of the evening's enjoyment is derived from spotting the knowing references to various Carry On films, Up Pompeii and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum etc.

There are those who regard Shakespeare as the apex of British cultural achievement and Carry On films as its absolute nadir. This production will probably worry them a great deal, as it makes a highly convincing case for the continuity and common ground between the two. Brightly coloured costumes and beehive hair-dos are the order of the day, with a number of Kenneth Connor style 'phwoar's thrown in for good measure. All this is accompanied by Julian Philips's brilliant pastiche of Eric Rogers's ubiquitous scores for the Carry On films, replete with comic sound effects and swanee whistles accompanying girls in short dresses bending over.

Sadly, despite all this pop culture verve, there is the impression that Luscombe doesn't fully trust either the play or his audience. The text has been whittled down to two hours including interval, while the visual style sets the tone for the entire evening, putting the audience at its ease in the face of imagined difficulties with understanding The Bard.

There are two problems here: firstly, despite the many similarities and common antecedents, The Comedy of Errors is not a Carry On film, and there are complexities which go overlooked as a result of the chosen style. Secondly, the cast at the Globe is not a Carry On cast. The films were, after all, vehicles for notably singular and luminous performers. You can't do a Carry On film with only a pair of Jim Dales, a couple of Kenneth Connors and a Joan Sims. It simply doesn't work. Having embarked on this Carry On style, it is a pity that the experiment isn't carried through to its logical conclusion. It would be fascinating to see how the play would have stood up to a cast crammed with personalities the size of Kenneth Williams or Frankie Howerd.

As it stands, this is a remarkably unstarry production of the play. Andrew Havill as the bemused Antipholus of Syracuse is a likeable enough Jim Dale-type, handsome everyman figure, while Sam Alexander as his balding, bearded servant Dromio presents an energetic, witty reading of the part. The Ephesian contingent fares less well, with Eliot Giuralarocca's Dromio scarcely on stage for long enough to establish himself as anything more than an oafish slave, while his master's trajectory from respected man-about-town to gibbering wreck is not allowed the space or stage-time to convince. Sarah Woodward as Adriana, his betrayed wife, plays her part in the mode of an amusingly melodramatic Joan Sims, but loses crucial sympathy by playing the very real tragedy of her circumstances for laughs. More interesting is the brief vision of the courtesan (Cate Debenham-Taylor) as a blonde dolly bird who appears onstage to the inevitable burlesque music, wearing a bright blue, micro-mini toga, who raises the question of quite how much of the sixties' ludicrously sexist presentation of women modern audiences will play along with.

In creating such a quick-fire cinematic version of the play, Luscombe has frustratingly allowed moments of fear and potential tragedy to be papered over with comic acting and light-heartedness, making it impossible really to empathise with the characters or care about their situations. In making a credible Carry On out of Shakespeare's play, some of the extremes of light and shade have been lost from the production. This is, after all, a play which begins with the threat of execution hanging over a man's head. There is never once the feeling that this threat will actually be realised, or that any character is ever in genuine fear for their life or sanity.

For all of that, there is much about the production which is enjoyable. It is an agreeably cheeky, low-brow romp; as British as seaside postcards, page three girls and London buses, albeit between heavily inverted commas.

Till 12 August 2006