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Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Double delirium at Georgia Shakespeare
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Comedy of Errors.” Through Aug. 7.
Georgia Shakespeare opens its 20th season with a carnival-style telling of “The Comedy of Errors” —- and two of the more auspicious Atlanta debuts in recent memory.
All the way from Poughkeepsie comes Sean Penn look-alike Taylor Kohler (Dromio of Ephesus), while former Laurence Olivier crony Armitage Shanks ventures across the pond to make a big splash as Antipholus of Ephesus.
If you can’t smell the fresh scent of manure wafting across the theater’s greensward these days, that’s OK. Maybe your sinuses are plugged. But if your eyes don’t tell you that Shanks bears an uncanny resemblance to company stalwart Chris Kayser, or that Kohler could be the twin of resident ham Chris Ensweiler, you might want to have yourself declared legally blind.
Kayser and Ensweiler, who play both pairs of mismatched twins in Shakespeare’s ageless farce, have penned playful fake bios in the program, slyly naming their fraudulent counterparts after real-life manufacturers of plumbing fixtures.
So if nothing else, producing artistic director Richard Garner’s irreverent take on “The Comedy” is an invitation to flush your troubles down the drain and luxuriate in an onslaught of slapstick that riffs on everything from Groucho and Harpo to Barbie dolls and bling. Plus, it’s cheaper than flying to New York to see the similarly dopey “Spamalot.â€?
Based on Plautus’ “Menaechmi,” and adapted by Rodgers and Hart as “The Boys From Syracuse,â€? the play is essentially about a pair of twins (Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus ) separated at birth who end up as servants to two masters who were also twins separated at birth (Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus). When fate brings the four to the same place, it becomes a case of mistaken identity run amok.
Here, Garner and his design team of Kat Conley (sets) and Sydney Roberts (costumes) spin some of the same visual cotton candy they used so copiously in their Fellini-inspired “The Taming of the Shrew” in 2002. If you saw that show, this “Comedy” —- which begins with a ragtag band of horn-blowing, baton-twirling circus eccentrics —- may feel a tad familiar.
And even seasoned theatergoers may be momentarily confused by Kayser and Ensweiler’s doubling up to play parts normally assigned to four actors. I saw a few patrons scramble for their synopses to catch up on the plot.
That said, the use of puppet/dolls to act out the shipwreck described in Egeon’s opening speech is divinely inspired. Having the Dromios address each other through an intercom at the top of Act 3 is priceless. And the sight gag that turns the Abbess (Megan McFarland) into a midget is brilliant.
Happily, Kayser and Ensweiler seem to have bottomless supplies of tricks —- as do Kohler and Shanks, for that matter (!). Also mesmerizing is the way Daniel May (First Merchant), Bradley Sherrill (Second Merchant) and Joe Knezevich (Balthazar) metamorphose into odd and almost unrecognizable images.
Crystal Dickinson makes a wonderfully overwrought Adriana, Courtney Patterson turns Luciana into a pert blond bombshell from Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Park Krausen’s Courtesan is a walking whoopee cushion who seems to have traipsed in from a Parisian cabaret of some lost, whimsical era.
The pièce de résistance is Dr. Pinch (Rob Cleveland), who has a platinum fright wig that makes him look like a Troll doll who’s stuck its finger in a light socket. The visual equivalent to Klimchak’s warpy original score (performed live), Dr. Pinch and his pair of cone-breasted, vinyl-clad vixens feel ripped from a zombie flick. Ancient Rome this is not.
In its two-for-the-price-of-one casting conceit, “The Comedy” may be too clever for its own good. But even for those who can’t quite follow the thread, it succeeds as frothy, fun entertainment.
The verdict: Still funny after 400 years.
THE 411: “The Comedy of Errors.” 8 p.m. today-Saturday. And other dates through Aug. 7. $10-$35. Conant Performing Arts Center, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road, Atlanta. 404-264-0020, www.gashakespeare.org.
