Shipwrecks, mysterious mistaken identity, long-lost loved ones and the threat of high seas execution: no, we’re not talking about a Johnny Depp flick here.
Think Shakespeare.Think comedy.Think “The Comedy of Errors” opening tonight at the Babcock Theatre.
This is not your great, great, great, great, great grandfather’s “Comedy of Errors,” however.No, just your father’s. Set before the flamboyant facade of London’s Carnaby Street circa the 1960s, with music from The Beatles and a Peter Marx-ian stage setting, this production is bound to dazzle audiences and actors alike.
As the senior performance of the U’s Actor Training Program, “The Comedy of Errors” is a play for students and by students, guaranteeing a good time to be had by all.
Well, almost completely by students.
Guest director Dennis Lee Delaney has been tapped to direct this comedic tale of loved ones lost in a shipwreck, then found in dire straits, re-united by fate. Having helmed more than 90 productions in his career, including other Shakespearean classics “Romeo and Juliet” for the Orlando Shakespeare Festival and “Julius Caesar” for the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Delaney is a seasoned professional.
Currently heading the MFA Director’s Program at Ohio University, Delaney has donated his time to turn this starkly sordid comedy into a renovated vision of stark, sordid comedy.
Shakespeare’s first and shortest jaunt into the territory of humor, “The Comedy of Errors” chronicles the separation of twins Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse in shipwreck at youth. One with mother and one with father, each duo assumed that the other had perished. Eighteen years later, the twins’ father Aegeon is sentenced to death and the families are unknowingly united in the city of Ephesus. Through a series of miraculous events, mistaken identities arise between the twins and their servants (who are also conveniently twins) and hilarity ensues.
Mind you, the Actor’s Program unravels this plot in 1960s London, and not Shakespeare’s traditional ‘hood.
“The Comedy of Errors”-the psychedelic-version-will run from Jan. 26 through Feb. 6 at the Babcock Theatre and promises to pit classic Renaissance tradition against 1960s pop-culture excess. Tickets are $12 for general admission and $6 for students and can be purchased at Kingsbury Hall, the Union and in various Arttix outlets.
Babcock Theatre presents “The Comedy of Errors”Jan. 26-Feb. 6Tickets are $6 for students,$12 for general publicTickets can be purchased at Kingsbury Hall, Union or Arttix For more informationcall 581-7100