Theatre in Review: The Comedy of Errors (Public Theater/Delacorte Theater)

	Hamish Linklater and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Photo: Joan Marcus

Most summers, the Delacorte is a temple of Shakespeare, but these nights the real tribute is being paid to the gods of comedy, thanks to Daniel Sullivan's lovingly hoked-up staging of The Comedy of Errors. Bardolators are hereby advised to hold their tongues and save their complaints for more serious theatrical crimes and misdemeanors. The Comedy of Errors, one of Shakespeare's earliest and shortest pieces, is little more than old-fashioned knockabout farce, its laughs derived from surefire plot contrivances, not majestic verse. (Snap quiz: Name one quotable line from the play. See, I told you.)

And let us not forget that plenty of directors have had fun roughing up Shakespeare's text. Robert Woodruff unleashed The Flying Karamazov Brothers on it at Lincoln Center in 1987. William Gaskill's 1992 staging for Theatre for a New Audience was top-heavy with comic business. That same year, another production at the Delacorte added the troupe Antigravity, Inc., whose members filled the stage with juggling and acrobatic feats. And almost everyone prefers The Boys from Syracuse, which keeps the plot, borrowed from Plautus, and livens it up with a bouquet of heavenly Rodgers and Hart songs. Next to these, Sullivan's slapstick extravaganza seems almost like an act of textural reverence.

Well, almost. Sullivan's approach turns The Comedy of Errors into a screwball farce in swing time. The tone is set by a sextet of hepcats and kittens who take the stage before the play begins and remain omnipresent, jitterbugging and lindy-hopping their way through the scene changes. We are in a version of '40s-era Upstate city -- these boys really are from Syracuse --although nobody says so -- an ever-changing streetscape with the characters coming and going via an Adirondack Trails bus headed for various upstate locations. This cockeyed world is populated by a cast of wisecrackers and wise guys; the leading ladies look and sound like gangsters' molls, and several supporting characters are almost certainly mobbed up. For example, the Duke of Ephesus is turned into a faintly menacing godfather figure (Skipp Sudduth, channeling Marlon Brando's Mafioso whisper). Even the good sisters of the local convent pack heat under their habits.

In a production that has no time for anything but frivolity, Jonathan Hadary sets the tone as the woebegone merchant Egeon, who, among other sorrows, is burdened with delivering the play's ton and a half of exposition. It's a lengthy saga of misfortune that must be endured so we can get to the laughs, but it can be a major bore to sit through. Here it becomes an amusing show-and-tell exercise, with Egeon producing an array of props, ranging from little puppets to a nearly full-size ship's mast, from his traveling case, illustrating his tale of two sets of identical twins separated from their loved ones and each other by a storm at sea. From the start, we are on notice that every possible aspect of Shakespeare's script will be subject to merciless kidding.

Sullivan's brightest idea is a casting coup: The four leading characters -- those long-lost twin siblings -- are here played by two actors only, each of whom barely has time to catch his breath before being plunged into a new thicket of complications. This wickedly cruel assignment has been handed to Hamish Linklater and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who run themselves delightfully ragged through the production's fast-paced 90 minutes. As the two men named Antipholus, Linklater, with his lanky frame, permanently tousled hair, and wary eyes, is built for farce; he has 101 nonplussed expressions, each of which is put to good use as he is mistaken for a cad, a chiseler, and a mental patient, among other indignities. His unfailingly timed low-ball line readings -- especially when he is trying to talk himself out of yet another jam -- never fail to amuse. And when finally, after one misunderstanding too many, he is roused to a fury and bares in a rapid-fire monologue the sequence of events that have brought him to his current state of peril, he does so with a fine, furious brio, honestly earning the applause that follows.

Double-cast as the servants named Dromio, Ferguson is the evening's designated whipping boy, his ears boxed, his rear end kicked, and his entire body subject to a king-sized whip as he continues to misconstrue which master he is currently serving. Wielding an egg beater as a weapon, cringing in the face of the mountainous lady he has just been informed is his wife, and collapsing into a stupor when his master is injected with a sedative, he executes each lowbrow gag with the delicacy of a pro who knows he doesn't have to press hard for a laugh. Indeed, both men execute their rough-and-ready comic business with a restraint that adds to the hilarity. Even a food fight, which climaxes with a plate of spaghetti dropped on Ferguson's head, is accomplished with a poker-faced seriousness that recalls the internecine battles of Laurel and Hardy.

Sullivan has surrounded these two solemn mischief-makers with a solid supporting cast. As the fed-up spouse of one Antipholus, all too often undone by her own fury, Emily Bergl pulls off some pretty spectacular pratfalls. Heidi Schreck is delightful as Bergl's sister, who is horrified to find herself being wooed by the man she believes is her brother-in-law. De'Adre Aziza adds some sass as the local courtesan, and she offers a charming rendition of the verse "Sigh No More" from Much Ado About Nothing, here set to music by Greg Pliska. Becky Ann Baker delights as a tough-talking, ruler-wielding abbess, who shows up at the eleventh hour to help untangle the plot.

Making its own impression is the clever production design, led by John Lee Beatty's frequently-in-motion set. Everyone said that Beatty's design for The Nance was inspired by Edward Hopper, but this is truer of The Comedy Errors, which features a street scene right out of a Hopper painting, in front of which is a trio of buildings that turn to become chapels, brothels, bus stations, and other locales. That cut-out Adirondack bus that keeps appearing is such a vivid period piece that you wouldn't be surprised to see Ralph Kramden in the driver's seat. Probably because of the abundant musical and dance sequences, Jeff Croiter lights the show like a musical, with plenty of saturated pinks, lavenders, blues, and ambers, using sidelight to carve the dancers out from the stage. Toni-Leslie James' costumes match niftily tailored men's suits, complete with vests and fedoras, to ladies' dresses with the tightly fitted bodices and flowing, flowery skirts of the period. As usual, Acme Sound Partners provides solid reinforcement, no small achievement in the middle of Manhattan, with planes flying overhead.

Sullivan is probably better known as a director of drama, but his staging of The Comedy of Errors proves that the frothier the farce, the more it benefits from discipline and understatement. At the end of the evening, Linklater, Ferguson, and company are probably on the edge of exhaustion; watching them trucking around the stage, they look like they haven't even broken a sweat. I imagine the gods of comedy are well-pleased.--David Barbour