Debate has raged in the Coffee Spew household the last two summers over the decision by American Players Theatre to forego their classical approach to Shakespearean set and costume design. We’ve agreed that last year’s updating of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was Felliniesque, but not as a compliment. The set was a construction site complete with porta-potty and the “rude mechanicals” as working-class laborers in hardhats. There were starlets in sunglasses and paparazzi on cell phones. We’re feeling more warmth toward this year’s Casablanca-inflected The Comedy of Errors, with its playful foreign-intrigue backlot designed by Kevin Depinet. (We attended last night’s clear, if humid outdoor performance.) The dizzying identical-twins mix-up lends itself to fast-paced and intricately choreographed screwball comedy and slapstick farce, hallmarks of Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, as well as American Players Theatre at its audience-pleasing best. (Laurel and Hardy—among many—used a version of Shakespeare’s plot for their 1936 film, Our Relations, in which they played both sets of identical twins via trick photography.)
Perhaps the biggest success of the night was the imaginative work of costume designer Devon Painter. Actresses Carey Cannon and Susan Shunk—strong in their roles as Adriana and Luciana, respectively—were dressed like glamorous holograms of Ingrid Bergman and Katharine Hepburn. Cleverist modernization touch would have to go to the “lock-out” scene (Act III, Scene I). The gate to Antipholus of Ephesus’s (Andy Truschinski) home became in director William Brown’s staging a locked townhouse door with an electric buzzer and speakerphone. Dromio of Syracuse (Steve Haggard) was offstage (inside the house), while his onstage twin, Dromio of Ephesus (Darragh Kennan), responded to his brother’s increasingly hostile insults issuing from the tinnily amplified speaker. Haggard and Kennan wrung maximum laughs from line readings and agile physical comedy throughout the night. Equally memorable was composer Andrew Hansen’s rousing soundtrack-like music score. (The Comedy of Errors runs through October 4th.)
Coffee Spew 