Going in with zero knowledge is a plan fraught with mental scramble when the language of the spectacle is in early English, Shakespearean and removed from the actors’ voices. There’s a QR code on the front of the program and it’s there for a reason. Just enough to scan the synopsis and visualise some of the names and we’re off.
But we’re already in the lull of the intermission. Come upon us with little fanfare, an unusual splash into silence whispered with a pause. The music pipes up just a little louder. Louder than the voices of the actors as they pantomime before us.
The volume starts low, in the middle of the park where the crickets and other insects wait for dusk. They’re quiet, waiting for their turn. Perhaps they’re talking in hushed tones to settle us into the scene, of recounting the steps up to the point of the story. It is not for that. The distant hint of a storm is louder than the conviction of the recorded reading. It is instead a mix of low volume and pushing through the carnival of syllables that leaves the ears wanting for an adjustment.
There is an uneven amount of exasperation in the wordplay. Some read without a strength to their voice, asking for purchase from people unfamiliar (or reeling in the mindscape of high school readings and the morass of essays extracting intent from a long dead author) with the source. Others cast bold, convinced of their words weighing in on the situation.
It’s all standard until the actors play into the pantomime. With broad strokes and swinging flair into the rafters, the absurdity of pairs of twins with the same names running around and around each other takes hold. Then, after finally leaning past the dialogue do we see misunderstandings take back the stage. Behind the masks some fall back asking for the words to convey the meaning. Brian Estes as Dromio is broader in the stroke, enthusiastically pushing the words through the eyelets, gesturing to the point of making full use of the stage, for what else is it there for?
The stork at the crest hints at the shakiness and abandon of the world. Babies tossed onto the cement floor with no concern at all. We witness veggies shaken out of pants and doors creaking ajar as one side demands it open, all while locked. These minor rumblings along with the barbs from the peanut gallery push us into a world where your sanity is superfluous.
We are deep in the slapstick that what we know happens upon circumstance and situation. All that has come before us is only as certain as knowing what will happen after. When we take away the bedrock that is a familiar face we are left reaching into the darkness grabbing on for something that feels like it belongs as much as we think we do.
With a second or two delay between the pre-recorded dialogue and the movements and head-talking from the actors comes a sense of displacement. This step behind, where things just feel a little off-balance, adds to the nature of the farce. Things are not exactly fluid, shifting a little uncomfortably to cast doubt on the situation. It either is or isn’t the person you think is talking.
The Comedy of Errors strides in with confidence as the déjà vu and crossed paths run parallel with a speed that hugs the guardrails. The read picks up and the slinking of shoes back and forth across the stage heightens as false identities are the same as misinterpreted. Identity, and the self, is mostly a concept that relies on the perception from others.
Narrowly avoiding sitting on someone else’s food left on the stoop at the 26 July 2024 performance directed by Amber Frangos for Flashback Theater at the Joe Ford Amphitheatre in Somerset, Kentucky.
Reviewed on Monday, 23 September 2024