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Authors: William Shakespeare
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performances so sharp and engaging, the humour so infectious that there is no danger of that. 55
The production opened in threatening film noir style as a lift clanked its way to stage level to disgorge a handcuffed Egeon, accompanied by a heavyset jailer in shades, to be sentenced by a brutal mafioso duke, and as the play proceeded toward its joyful final reunions, Parker suggested that the sinister was still present: there were darkshadows across the city square and unexplained groups of top-hatted, beak-nosed warlocks gathered in corners. The farce, however, was joyous and riotous, with Keystone Kops-style chases that brought the house down.
2005—Shared Experience
Nancy Meckler made her RST debut with this production and brought to it her years with the Shared Experience company, creating a powerful ensemble piece with a strong narrative drive (the concern with narrative was evident from the start, as Egeon’s speech in which he told of the loss of his wife and sons was acted out with puppets). Her actors moved in a world of mystery and wonder, wonderfully funny while constantly in danger of losing themselves. The production’s success lay “in the way it mixes an ensemble evocation of Ephesus with a study in the mystery of identity.” 56
This Ephesus was gloriously vulgar, a world teeming with “pickpockets, parasites and ponces,” 57 not to mention acrobats and girls with hula hoops. The large cast was “blissfully endowed with madcap energy,” but at the same time “the vagrant extras remind us of the harshness of the world when one loses identity and home.” 58 Designer Katrina Lindsay dressed the cast in layers of striped, checked, and wildly assorted clothes; there was a plethora of tall stovepipe hats. The effect was of Dickensian London run mad. Benedict Nightingale complained that “the citizens can’t decide whether they belong to Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Gormenghast or Struwwelpeter.” 59 Other critics welcomed this elusiveness: “Here, with its anger, suspicion, mercantile greed and sense of chaos, is a world twinned with our own. Just through the looking glass. Just out of reach.” 60
Above the stage hung a great white canopy that was part circus tent, part sail, and part blank white screen—a setting for carnival, a reminder of shipwreck, a blank on which the characters could paint their identities.
Seeing Double
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop (1.2.35–6)
says the visiting Antipholus as he arrives in Ephesus, and even while the audience hopes that the comic misunderstandings will continue, it also longs to see these lost brothers reunited. As we generally look for the pairing of lovers at the end of a comedy. we look here for the pairing of twins. In 1962, when the whole ensemble came onstage at the opening and found definitive pieces of costume for their characters, they entered as a group but exited in pairs, establishing the pairing theme at the outset. Ian Richardson and Alec McCowen, both thin-faced and precise, were convincingly similar as the Antipholus twins, though clearly differentiated in character—McCowen, as the Syracusan twin, round-eyed and round-mouthed with astonishment, Richardson sadly accepting and wildly furious by turns. In keeping with the commedia style, the two Dromios were given identical grotesque noses. In 1972, when the production was revived, John Wood was hailed as a wildly funny Antipholus of Ephesus.
In the 1976 updated musical version, Roger Rees and Mike Gwilym were finely contrasted and physically close: Rees was the wide-eyed tourist (wearing his camera even in the bedroom) while Gwilym was a sharp, gum-chewing resident of Las Vegas–style Ephesus. Michael Williams and Nickolas Grace, as the Dromios, were clowns with red hair and baggy jeans. In 1983, Richard O’Callaghan and Henry Goodman were red-nosed knockabout clowns, but Peter McEnery and Paul Greenwood, as the Antipholuses, were clownlike too,
The production opened in threatening film noir style as a lift clanked its way to stage level to disgorge a handcuffed Egeon, accompanied by a heavyset jailer in shades, to be sentenced by a brutal mafioso duke, and as the play proceeded toward its joyful final reunions, Parker suggested that the sinister was still present: there were darkshadows across the city square and unexplained groups of top-hatted, beak-nosed warlocks gathered in corners. The farce, however, was joyous and riotous, with Keystone Kops-style chases that brought the house down.
2005—Shared Experience
Nancy Meckler made her RST debut with this production and brought to it her years with the Shared Experience company, creating a powerful ensemble piece with a strong narrative drive (the concern with narrative was evident from the start, as Egeon’s speech in which he told of the loss of his wife and sons was acted out with puppets). Her actors moved in a world of mystery and wonder, wonderfully funny while constantly in danger of losing themselves. The production’s success lay “in the way it mixes an ensemble evocation of Ephesus with a study in the mystery of identity.” 56
This Ephesus was gloriously vulgar, a world teeming with “pickpockets, parasites and ponces,” 57 not to mention acrobats and girls with hula hoops. The large cast was “blissfully endowed with madcap energy,” but at the same time “the vagrant extras remind us of the harshness of the world when one loses identity and home.” 58 Designer Katrina Lindsay dressed the cast in layers of striped, checked, and wildly assorted clothes; there was a plethora of tall stovepipe hats. The effect was of Dickensian London run mad. Benedict Nightingale complained that “the citizens can’t decide whether they belong to Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Gormenghast or Struwwelpeter.” 59 Other critics welcomed this elusiveness: “Here, with its anger, suspicion, mercantile greed and sense of chaos, is a world twinned with our own. Just through the looking glass. Just out of reach.” 60
Above the stage hung a great white canopy that was part circus tent, part sail, and part blank white screen—a setting for carnival, a reminder of shipwreck, a blank on which the characters could paint their identities.
Seeing Double
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop (1.2.35–6)
says the visiting Antipholus as he arrives in Ephesus, and even while the audience hopes that the comic misunderstandings will continue, it also longs to see these lost brothers reunited. As we generally look for the pairing of lovers at the end of a comedy. we look here for the pairing of twins. In 1962, when the whole ensemble came onstage at the opening and found definitive pieces of costume for their characters, they entered as a group but exited in pairs, establishing the pairing theme at the outset. Ian Richardson and Alec McCowen, both thin-faced and precise, were convincingly similar as the Antipholus twins, though clearly differentiated in character—McCowen, as the Syracusan twin, round-eyed and round-mouthed with astonishment, Richardson sadly accepting and wildly furious by turns. In keeping with the commedia style, the two Dromios were given identical grotesque noses. In 1972, when the production was revived, John Wood was hailed as a wildly funny Antipholus of Ephesus.
In the 1976 updated musical version, Roger Rees and Mike Gwilym were finely contrasted and physically close: Rees was the wide-eyed tourist (wearing his camera even in the bedroom) while Gwilym was a sharp, gum-chewing resident of Las Vegas–style Ephesus. Michael Williams and Nickolas Grace, as the Dromios, were clowns with red hair and baggy jeans. In 1983, Richard O’Callaghan and Henry Goodman were red-nosed knockabout clowns, but Peter McEnery and Paul Greenwood, as the Antipholuses, were clownlike too,
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