Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Comedy of Errors (NT Live) Review

The Comedy of Errors
(Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, London - National Theatre Live Screening)

The National Live season continues with the National Theatre's production of The Comedy of Errors. The play is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays and although one can easily see a few holes in the plot, I always look forward to seeing how a production will approach the mishaps and hilarity that occur during the play. This was also a chance to see Lenny Henry demonstrate his acting abilities after his success in Othello.

During the introductory trailer before the production started, Director Dominic Cooke said that because it was one of Shakespeare's first plays, The Comedy of Errors has a simpler story than his later plays. His intentions were to expand upon a number of issues and themes within the play.  One was to give a darker tone to the play, and it was certainly the case during the first scene, where Egeon was interrogated by the Duke in a dark room. Changing the setting to London also gave a gritty look to the production. Another issue that Cooke used was immigration, by showing that the twin brothers from Syracuse and their natural and adoptive father were of Afro-Caribbean descent, and that they go travelling to far off lands to find their missing relatives. It was interesting seeing the travelling brothers cope in a different country. Lenny played Antipholus authentically with a strong Afro-Caribbean accent, and throughout the production he and Dromino would react to several aspects of a foreign society with wide-eyed confusion whilst enacting chants to ward of these supposed "liberties of sin". However, in the end the play is a simple comedy and as soon the chaos takes over these themes are soon forgotten about. The exception comes at the end, where everything comes to a resolution that was bordering on emotional.

Lenny Henry and Lucian Masmati were the highlights of the production, both because of Lenny's acting abilities and the way their ethical backgrounds are portrayed. The other brothers are very good, though less interesting because they did not need to use particular accents like Lenny Henry. Claudie Blakley and Michelle Terry played the wife and her sister as Essex girls, which was very good though I thought Claudie over did it climbing on a pool table seductively when she first finds Antipholus of Syracuse.

Despite the efforts to change the setting the scenic designs did feel a bit static in the end, which undermined the comedy in the play. At first, it was nice to watch twenty first century Londoners react to the events of a late sixteenth century play, but as the production progresses the stage becomes empty. The Brothers of Ephesus' house consists of a balcony and the main door into a block of expensive apartments, which takes away some of the intimacy of the scenes that are set there. The front door scene for instance is basically boiled down to the Ephesus brothers shouting through an intercom, which constricts what movements they can achieve in the scene

Furthermore, what makes this play fun to watch is seeing the residents of a town cope with the incidents that suddenly occur once these strangers appear. For instance when both sets of brothers are being hunted down because of their supposed madness, the whole town is meant to get involved and I always look forward to seeing what unorthodox methods will be used as they struggle to stop them. The advantage of this production was the scale of the set, which was an entire block of buildings from which the brothers would dart in and out during the chase. Yet I never got a sense that the whole of London was involved. Instead the brothers were being hunted down by the equivalent of the NHS and Metropolitan Police, and it is not rocket science guess how these characters would be stopped. Elsewhere, it is clear that the use of band is a sign that the production was riding the One Man, Two Guvnors bandwagon, and although they were another example of immigration by having them sing in a different language, it felt unnecessary.

In the end this production is hilarious in some places but never reaches farcical heights. Also, although they were interesting to observe, the issues that Dominic Cooke brought up soon got lost as this comedy progresses. On the other hand some of the performances, like Lenny Henry, where entertaining to watch. The scale of the set meanwhile enabled some enjoyable moments, though some scenes either felt empty or lacked intimacy. This is worth a low Bargain.

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