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Producer: The HandleBards
Cast: Craig Hamilton, Lucinda Davidson, Sam Perry, George Atwell Gerhards
Director: Charlotte Peters
Runs until September at venues round the UK
Thought to be Shakespeare’s first play, “The Comedy of Errors” is potentially his silliest, but it has a deeply serious beginning: Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse and father of one of the plots’ two sets of identical twins, is condemned to death in Ephesus for violating the ban against travel between the two rival cities.
Given our preoccupations with wars and divisions between neighbours, who have more in common than they appear to realise, a director might be tempted to draw out the darker resonance.
But this is the HandleBards’ uplifting summer tour, which after 935 miles of pedalling, brought the cycling players to a picnicking audience in the grounds of Horace Walpole’s Gothic revival mansion at Strawberry Hill, west London.
That means the mood is light, the pace exhausting and the farce of the ludicrous and exhilarating rather than agonisingly anxious kind.
The four HandleBards carry everything they need for an evening of absurd entertainment on the Pashley bikes that also feature in the performance. A few of the lines are even delivered from the saddle.
The cast takes on all of Shakespeare’s roles, with help from press-ganged members of the audience, and in just under two hours crams in all the essentials of Shakespeare’s lively young play, which lays out some of the themes he would spend his career revisiting.
Colour-coded Elizabethan ruffs and hats are meant to help us navigate the identity maze, but you may still find yourself feeling lost.
Arguably, that is the point: all these potentially tragic misunderstandings are just a nightmarish blur. What we should focus on is the harmony of a happy ending and its united sets of identical twins.
The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare
Producer: The HandleBards
Cast: Craig Hamilton, Lucinda Davidson, Sam Perry, George Atwell Gerhards
Director: Charlotte Peters
Runs until September at venues round the UK
Thought to be Shakespeare’s first play, “The Comedy of Errors” is potentially his silliest, but it has a deeply serious beginning: Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse and father of one of the plots’ two sets of identical twins, is condemned to death in Ephesus for violating the ban against travel between the two rival cities.
Given our preoccupations with wars and divisions between neighbours, who have more in common than they appear to realise, a director might be tempted to draw out the darker resonance.
But this is the HandleBards’ uplifting summer tour, which after 935 miles of pedalling, brought the cycling players to a picnicking audience in the grounds of Horace Walpole’s Gothic revival mansion at Strawberry Hill, west London.
That means the mood is light, the pace exhausting and the farce of the ludicrous and exhilarating rather than agonisingly anxious kind.
The four HandleBards carry everything they need for an evening of absurd entertainment on the Pashley bikes that also feature in the performance. A few of the lines are even delivered from the saddle.
The cast takes on all of Shakespeare’s roles, with help from press-ganged members of the audience, and in just under two hours crams in all the essentials of Shakespeare’s lively young play, which lays out some of the themes he would spend his career revisiting.
Colour-coded Elizabethan ruffs and hats are meant to help us navigate the identity maze, but you may still find yourself feeling lost.
Arguably, that is the point: all these potentially tragic misunderstandings are just a nightmarish blur. What we should focus on is the harmony of a happy ending and its united sets of identical twins.
Barbara Lewis © 2024.
By Barbara Lewis • comedy, plays, playwrights, theatre, year 2024 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, comedy, plays, playwrights, theatre