The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare’s Globe review — daft farce haunted by shadows

The Comedy of Errors

Shakespeare’s Globe, London

“I am amazed, and know not what to say,” declares Hermia at one of the points of maximum confusion in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

She could be speaking for almost any of the characters in the two opening plays of the summer season at Shakespeare’s Globe. Comedies both, they joyously upend normality and are delivered with often infectious glee by the two casts. Yet the shadows that weave through them are striking. The strange events in the coastal city of Ephesus and in the forest near Athens reveal some wriggling naked truths that can’t wholly be dispelled with tidy endings.

To Ephesus first. The Globe takes on a nautical flair for Sean Holmes’s highly enjoyable staging of The Comedy of Errors. A ship’s bowsprit juts out from the theatre’s upper gallery, jetties reach into the crowd, the Syracusan merchant who comes to the city to seek his son arrives in a wooden boat that forges through the standing spectators. He is instantly arrested and threatened with death — strangers who arrive in small boats are not welcome — unless he can find kith, kin or cash to pay a fine.

That dark fact anchors this buoyantly daft comedy, a lurking shadow that reminds us of the painful family separation that underpins all the shenanigans. Antipholus (master) and Dromio (servant) of Syracuse, also newly arrived, are constantly mistaken for their long-lost twins, Antipholus (master) and Dromio (servant) of Ephesus, residents of the town since infancy. A simple conversation might clear things up, but this is farce, so we are plunged into mayhem — marital, financial, legal — all of it nicely pitched by the cast who nimbly walk the line between sending it up and taking it seriously.

There are lovely performances from Matthew Broome as Antipholus of Ephesus, increasingly dismayed as he is barred from his own home as an imposter, and Michael Elcock as Antipholus of Syracuse, bewitched and bewildered in equal measure by his reception. There’s mounting outrage from the two Dromios, repeatedly beaten for not executing orders issued to their twin. It’s a sign of the strength of the production that when the indisposition of George Fouracres meant David Ijiti took over as Dromio of Ephesus at the performance I saw, the show absorbed it as part of the nonsense. Jordan Metcalfe’s Dromio of Syracuse, meanwhile, beautifully mixes physical knockabout with Beckett-like musings on existence. “Am I Dromio? Am I myself?” he cries as he scales a rope ladder.

But absurd as it all is, this early comedy foreshadows Shakespeare’s later masterpieces about family separation and reconciliation. There’s the unnerving — and all too contemporary — fear of losing your identity and, while not foregrounding them, Holmes doesn’t neglect the cruelties running through the play. As with many a Shakespearean ending, the poignant final reunion leaves questions hanging in the air.

★★★★☆

To July 29, shakespearesglobe.com

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Shakespeare’s Globe, London

The shadows have become deeper and the questions more piercing in Elle While’s staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Again, there is humour to enjoy, but unsettling emotions snake through the production just as roots and tendrils wind about the Globe’s pillars in Paul Williams’s design. There’s even a touch of Midsommar folk horror to this Midsummer, not least in Michelle Terry’s unnervingly unpredictable Puck, who bursts up from below the stage wreathed in smoke, her head clad in a thicket of muddy twigs (costumes by designer takis), and who shows a marked reluctance to obey Jack Laskey’s Oberon.

The transmasculine actors Sam Crerar and Vinnie Heaven, as an ardent Lysander and anxious Demetrius, together with non-binary actor Isobel Thom as Helena, bring layers of gender complexity to the lovers, making the stark gender divisions and cruel misogyny that characterise the Athenian law all the more striking. But while the forest, a domain composed of dreams and desires, subverts those toxic power structures, it also unmasks disturbing elements of the lovers’ psyches. And the fact that Francesca Mills, as a vibrant Hermia, has achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, gives the insults about stature that are hurled at her a particularly nasty sting.

Even Puck’s casual transformation of Mariah Gale’s Bottom into an ass feels notably unkind here. Gale is very funny as she lollops like an ungainly donkey, but she’s also touching as she recalls the love that she thought she shared with Titania, reminding you that her character has basically been used as a prop in a squabble between the fairy monarchs.

It doesn’t quite pull together — you don’t get that giddy sense of losing your bearings that you can have with the Dream or the unsettling uncertainties that accompany the lovers out of the forest — and some of the comedy feels a little strenuous. But there are lovely performances from the earnest Mechanicals — particularly Sarah Finigan as a timid Snug the joiner and Rebecca Root as the hassled director Quince. James Maloney’s brass-driven music gives the production a rollicking drive.

★★★☆☆

To August 12, shakespearesglobe.com

Once On This Island

Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, London

More messy mortal love and supernatural intervention under the stars at Regent’s Park’s Open Air Theatre. Once On This Island, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s 1990 musical based on Rosa Guy’s 1985 novel My Love, My Love (itself inspired by The Little Mermaid), gets an exuberant, witty staging at the hands of talented director Ola Ince and her wonderful cast. It’s admirable, but not quite enough to disguise the limitations of the musical.

With a blazing opening number driven by Dan Ellis’s superb percussion, you might expect an escapist evening. But from a contemporary framework, the narrative spools back to a story about inherited inequality, racism and class. It’s the tale of Ti Moune, an orphaned peasant girl in Haiti who is saved by the gods from a devastating storm, to grow up to be a young woman of undauntable spirit.

Those same gods, however, also engineer her meeting with Daniel (Stephenson Ardern-Sodje), a wealthy, lighter-skinned young man descended from French colonisers, who has been badly injured in a car crash. Ti Moune falls in love and dismisses the god of death by offering her life for his. But while Daniel takes her as a lover, he breaks her heart by marrying a woman of his own class and heritage.

Ince and designer Georgia Lowe bring mountains of invention to the piece. The gods hover around the action, spectacularly arrayed in lavish costumes and headdresses; fire and water scoot across the stage; the versatile cast play everything from street traders to birds in the trees to the trees themselves. The music, brilliantly played, and choreography would warm even the chilliest early summer evening and Gabrielle Brooks as Ti Moune is terrific and has a superb, soaring voice.

But the storytelling remains skimpy, with thinly drawn characters and important themes and dilemmas insufficiently explored, while the narrative of Ti Moune’s utter devotion to Daniel feels dated. “Some girls you marry, some you love,” he sings, which makes you wonder what on earth she sees in him.

★★★☆☆

To June 10, openairtheatre.com