By Elise Roberts
BYU’s Young Company in Provo presents a condensed and unique production of A Comedy of Errors set in a 1960s-style beach town. Director Kris Jennings successfully shortens Shakespeare’s shortest comedy to just under an hour, making it ideal for children. And I loved Jennings’ beach motif.
Shakespeare wrote two comedies capitalizing on the problems and mix ups with identical twins. In A Comedy of Errors, twin baby boys are separated in a tragic shipwreck and end up in different cities. One twin with the father, Aegeon (Robert Moore) and the other with the mother, Aemilia (Joanna Noall). Complicating this is the fact that each parent thought they had the son named Antipholus, so not only do the boys have identical faces, but they have the same name as well, leaving us with Antipholus of Syracuse (Caleb Andrus) and Antipholus of Ephesus (Stephen Oley). And, as luck would have it, the servants separated with the boys are also identical twins with the same name: Dromio of Syracuse (Jasper Raines) and Dromio of Ephesus (Heidi Wilding).
Andrus and Wilding set the tone in the beginning of the play as they journey to Ephesus to find their long-lost brothers. When Antipholus of Syracuse is mistaken for his brother by Adriana (a role shared by Claire Eyestone and Jeanelle Long) he delightfully plays along and enjoys her enthusiastic kisses until he meets and falls in love with her sister, Luciana (Samantha Daynes). Daynes offers the appropriate hesitation to this sudden attention from whom she thinks is her brother-in-law but is clearly intrigued by his passionate advances.
Further mishaps and mistakes come at the audience one after the other as one brother is charged with theft by the demanding merchant (also played by Noall), arrested, and hauled off in chains. Another wife, Nell (also played by Moore) mistakes her husband’s twin Dromio for her husband and treats him with her attentions to his utter disgust and horror. Moore gets the most laughter from the audience with his hilarious portrayal of Nell. The balloons stuffed in his bosom add to the raucous reactions of the audience.
The cast makes fun changes to the script by throwing in words such as “cowabunga” and “corn dogs”, which delighted my children who accompanied me. Raines and Wilding perform a secret handshake routine upon their discovering they were long-lost brothers, also a treat for adults and kids in the audience.
In the closing scene, the cast members join in an enthusiastic line dance reminiscent of John Travolta.
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As two sets of identical twins did not happen to audition for the play, the production crew and specifically costume designer Hannah Liberatore give the audience clues about the characters by using nearly identical clothing to portray the twins. The Hawaiian shirts and beach outfits add a fun flair.
If you’ve been hoping to introduce Shakespeare to kids in your life, The Young Company’s production of A Comedy of Errors is an ideal production to help you do it. They also will be touring elementary schools around Utah County, so kids everywhere may have the opportunity to enjoy this fun, youth-targeted production.
BYU’s Young Company presents A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare.
Nelke Theatre, Franklin S. Harris Fine Arts Center, BYU, 800 E Campus Dr, Provo, UT 84602
Feb. 6-9, 13-16, 2019 7:00 PM, Feb. 9, 16, 2019 2:00 PM, 4:00 PM
Tickets: $6-8 Available in person at the BYU Ticket Office in the HFAC or Marriott Center, by phone at 801.422.2981 or online
BYU Young Company Facebook Page
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