The Comedy of Errors review, The Olivier

Doubles trouble

The Comedy of Errors contains set piece humour that  guarantees laughs and the good news is this production pulls them off. How not to laugh at the rolling-eyed Lenny Henry in African mode, clicking fingers over his bald pate to ward off the spirits as he lurches from fright to fight to flight? Or at two of our finest actresses, Claudie Blakley and Michelle Terry as WAGs in skyscraper heels, mouthing off in rhyming couplets? More complicated is judging the production as a whole.

Dominic Cooke's modern take on Shakespeare's tale of matching sets of twins, separated at birth, unwittingly getting caught up in a series of events, scams and blunders caused by mistaken identity, thunders along unevenly, sometimes at the cost of clarity. Through cock-ups and cocks-up as one beds the other's wife, the laughs are liberally smeared icing on a sponge that fails to rise.

The biggest problem is the staging. The modern setting makes the joyfully silly, seedy. The looming set comprises tall, thin, ugly buildings that hover like perpendicular shadows of death sucking the energy out of a story that is small, local, vocal and slapstick: a tale dependent on intimacy to draw you in. The cast is constantly fighting for dominance, even through impressive special effects including an ambulance driven on stage and a Keystone Cops chase sequence.

In conclusion: The Bard meets Gulliver's Travels. The Comedy of Errors relies on the goodwill and collusion of the audience in a totally ludicrous set up and it's hard to collude when the set keeps screaming 'It's behind you'.

References
National Theatre, tickets