The Comedy of Errors

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Comedy Opened 10 January 2006, Closed 28 January 2006

Novello Theatre The Aldwych, London

The Royal Shakespeare Company present William Shakespeare's comedy The Comedy of Errors in a production directed by Nancy Meckler.

Brothers, sisters, masters and servants find themselves confused, baffled and bewildered by the events of a single day in Shakespeare's earliest comedy.

"Nancy Meckler's glorious new revival for the Royal Shakespeare Company... Ensemble playing that's blissfully endowed with madcap energy" The Daily Telegraph

"Nancy Meckler's delightful RSC production... It's a classic Shakespearean comedy about long-separated twins who come together in Ephesus amid a catalogue of mistaken identities. Katrina Lindsay's design resets the play among the low-lifes of 18th Century London and turns the action into a Gothic romp. There are some excellently orchestrated routines." The Mail on Sunday

"Super show...the greatest fun... Nancy Meckler's direction, with its absurdist costumes and jaunty musical touches, achieves just the right note of fantasy" The Daily Mail

"Any pain being inflicted in Nancy Meckler's new production of The Comedy of Errors is pantomime pain - a whack to the head with a large silver tray is accompanied by a joke sound-effect, a jab in the bottom delivered via an oversized comedy syringe. Such burlesque hilarity is thanks, of course, to the plot - confusion over two sets of identical twins separated at birth after a shipwreck... It is all very lovely to look at and, thankfully, Meckler's direction and the performances from the twin masters (Joe Dixon and Christopher Colquhoun), both in divine, swaggery tweed and velvet coats, are strong enough. This means the audience can see clearly through the funny costumes and the side-splitting mix-ups to the really rather sad tale of a split family underneath." The Sunday Telegraph

"An occasion for brimming eyes as well as laughter, making the heart feel as full as the stage" The Financial Times

"Gaudy, bawdy, it cries: 'Roll up! Roll up!' and its carnival atmosphere is hard to resist. More often than not, the soundtrack to a Shakespearian comedy is the polite cough of laughter most commonly traced back to English teachers embarrassing their school parties. Tonight, however, the auditorium rings with spontaneous guffaws and bursts of applause, the reward for inventive slapstick, comic precision and the timeless joy of watching people confounded by the unpredictability of life... Recognising that so much of this play is sleight of hand, a trick of the light, Meckler's production borrows the look of early cinema. Watching these characters spin about in a confusion of mistaken identity is like looking into a zoetrope - a whirl of colour light and magic... This is a joyous, life-affirming production, one that neither arrogantly assumes that its audience will be amused by creaky, unmodified jokes about cuckolds, nor obliterates the elemental farce at work." The Sunday Times