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carys-lapwood
17th March 2014

Review: A Comedy of Errors

Carys Lapwood reviews Propeller Theatre Company’s production of A Comedy of Errors at The Lowry
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TLDR

Right. First things first, A Comedy of Errors is not a good play. Like that Aldi smoked cheddar that’s still hanging out at the back of my fridge, it has not aged well. The plot is exhaustingly formulaic and the jokes are unrelentingly misogynistic. Two sets of twins, separated at birth, end up on the same island as adults. Over the course of one day, everyone in the town bumps into them, including the wife of one, her sister, and the goldsmith. But they, of course, do not meet each other. Insert lots of pratfalls and jokes about fat chicks, and you have a play that’s difficult to digest. It lacks the subtly or humanity of Shakespeare’s better known comedies, and in the wrong hands it could become painfully tedious and even quite unpleasant to watch.

Propeller’s production of A Comedy of Errors, however, which I saw at the Lowry on the 28th of February, was bloody brilliant. How on earth did they manage it? Purely, it seems, by sheer force of will, a tremendous amount of on-stage energy, and an ability to revel in the sheer madness of the plot.

Propeller have been reinterpreting Shakespeare in weird and wonderful ways since the late nineties, to much critical acclaim. As an all-male theatre group, who place a lot of emphasis on their slick ensemble work and fantastic set and costume design, it seemed like they knew what they were doing. The setting had been updated to a Bedidorm-esque holiday resort, complete with a Mariachi band wearing naff sombreros and stick-on moustaches. Although this helped to create the fun, festive, and slightly dodgy atmosphere the story required, in which the bawdy jokes and slapstick violence could be spun out in full force, it felt slightly forced in the first half. “You will find this hilarious, and you will laugh,” they seemed to insist.

The performance didn’t really relax into itself until just before the interval, when the comic set-up had been established, and the cast could revel in the jokes themselves. It was when the Village People lookalike policeman began serenading a woman in the audience at the start of Act Two that I really started giggling. And by the time the cross-dressing nun wearing purple thigh high boots appeared, I, like the audience, was in stitches. Overall, I’d say that Propeller did a sterling job with quite difficult material, but they were at their funniest when they threw the original text out of the window and went off-piste.

4 out of 5 stars


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