Read Online The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Shakespeare
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their faces painted blue and their emotions expressed in highly physical performances. In the 1996 touring production, the Dromios were shaven-headed—contemporary, tough, and vulnerable.
The 2000 production exploited David Tennant’s gift for comedy: a young Antipholus of Syracuse, he was gangly, goofy, wide-eyed, and polite before flipping to distraught mania. Ant hony Howell, by contrast, was a confident Ephesian spiv. The final reunions were given full value with a joyful tableau that balanced the darkness of the opening. Ian Hughes, who played Dromio of Syracuse, thought
It seemed right and proper that Shakespeare should leave both sets of twins on stage at the end of the scene. No lines are given to the Antipholuses to express their joy at having found each other—one suspects a few awkward questions to come behindclosed doors—but Shakespeare puts the two put-upon and much maligned Dromios centre stage to sum up their feelings for each other. The writing confirms what I had suspected all along: Shakespeare
likes
these servants. He, like all those watching from the sides of the rehearsal room, brushes away a tear of emotion, thankful that they have found in each other, not only a brother, but someone to love. 61
For her 2005 production, Nancy Meckler found “an uncanny set of dead ringers.” 62 A pair of statuesque black actors, Joe Dixon and Christopher Colquhoun, played the Antipholus twins, and two fine clowns, Jonathan Slinger and Forbes Masson, played a pair of scrawny Dromios with gravity-defying ginger quiffs. Slinger played the more cheerful clown, rolling with the punches, while Masson was surlier. At the end, while their masters were joyfully reunited, they were more guarded, more concerned to preserve their own identities.
Doubling Up
When Desmond Barrit and Graham Turner each played a pair of twins in Ian Judge’s 1990 production, the usual problem of making two actors convincingly identical was reversed—Graham Turner wore different colored waistcoats to differentiate the two Dromios— and much of the audience’s delight was generated by the doubling. Peter Holland, who was unhappy with the doubling, thought
The surprises were tricks of theatre—like adroit switches between Barrit and his double to allow an apparently impossible immediate re-entry on one side of the stage a fraction of a second after he seemed to have left on the other—but the audience’s gasps of pleasure at such spectacularly successful
trompe l’oeil
devices could not feed back into the play’s concerns. 63
Holland was particularly concerned about the effect of the doubling on the play’s ending. The moment when the two pairs of twins find themselves onstage together is the moment the audience has been wondering about—the moment when the illusion that there are fouractors will be shattered. The moment was skillfully stage-managed by the use of body doubles, but Holland comments,
It was the emotional force of the ending that was especially harmed. For Shakespeare’s ending teeters gloriously on the edge of sentimentality. As brother finds brother at last, there is an emotional release for characters and for audience. When it works—and it usually does—there is something tearful about the reunions, the reconstitution of the family. Even the inevitably funny rediscovery of the missing mother does not prevent our joy, prefiguring something of the force of the families re-formed at the end of the late plays. By doubling the Antipholuses, the force is diluted. The audience watched how the
doppelgänger
still tried to keep his back to them, following the theatrical technique, the actor’s skill, not the play’s argument. 64
Comic Moments
Every production has its great comic moments: there are the set pieces—the conjuring by Doctor Pinch; the geographical tour round the physical characteristics of Nell, the fat serving maid; the great chase through the streets—but there are also moments of new invention. In
The 2000 production exploited David Tennant’s gift for comedy: a young Antipholus of Syracuse, he was gangly, goofy, wide-eyed, and polite before flipping to distraught mania. Ant hony Howell, by contrast, was a confident Ephesian spiv. The final reunions were given full value with a joyful tableau that balanced the darkness of the opening. Ian Hughes, who played Dromio of Syracuse, thought
It seemed right and proper that Shakespeare should leave both sets of twins on stage at the end of the scene. No lines are given to the Antipholuses to express their joy at having found each other—one suspects a few awkward questions to come behindclosed doors—but Shakespeare puts the two put-upon and much maligned Dromios centre stage to sum up their feelings for each other. The writing confirms what I had suspected all along: Shakespeare
likes
these servants. He, like all those watching from the sides of the rehearsal room, brushes away a tear of emotion, thankful that they have found in each other, not only a brother, but someone to love. 61
For her 2005 production, Nancy Meckler found “an uncanny set of dead ringers.” 62 A pair of statuesque black actors, Joe Dixon and Christopher Colquhoun, played the Antipholus twins, and two fine clowns, Jonathan Slinger and Forbes Masson, played a pair of scrawny Dromios with gravity-defying ginger quiffs. Slinger played the more cheerful clown, rolling with the punches, while Masson was surlier. At the end, while their masters were joyfully reunited, they were more guarded, more concerned to preserve their own identities.
Doubling Up
When Desmond Barrit and Graham Turner each played a pair of twins in Ian Judge’s 1990 production, the usual problem of making two actors convincingly identical was reversed—Graham Turner wore different colored waistcoats to differentiate the two Dromios— and much of the audience’s delight was generated by the doubling. Peter Holland, who was unhappy with the doubling, thought
The surprises were tricks of theatre—like adroit switches between Barrit and his double to allow an apparently impossible immediate re-entry on one side of the stage a fraction of a second after he seemed to have left on the other—but the audience’s gasps of pleasure at such spectacularly successful
trompe l’oeil
devices could not feed back into the play’s concerns. 63
Holland was particularly concerned about the effect of the doubling on the play’s ending. The moment when the two pairs of twins find themselves onstage together is the moment the audience has been wondering about—the moment when the illusion that there are fouractors will be shattered. The moment was skillfully stage-managed by the use of body doubles, but Holland comments,
It was the emotional force of the ending that was especially harmed. For Shakespeare’s ending teeters gloriously on the edge of sentimentality. As brother finds brother at last, there is an emotional release for characters and for audience. When it works—and it usually does—there is something tearful about the reunions, the reconstitution of the family. Even the inevitably funny rediscovery of the missing mother does not prevent our joy, prefiguring something of the force of the families re-formed at the end of the late plays. By doubling the Antipholuses, the force is diluted. The audience watched how the
doppelgänger
still tried to keep his back to them, following the theatrical technique, the actor’s skill, not the play’s argument. 64
Comic Moments
Every production has its great comic moments: there are the set pieces—the conjuring by Doctor Pinch; the geographical tour round the physical characteristics of Nell, the fat serving maid; the great chase through the streets—but there are also moments of new invention. In
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