The Bomb-Itty of Errors (review)

The Bomb-itty of Errors. By Jordan Allen-Dutton, Jason Catalano, Gregory Qaiyum, and Erik Weiner. Music by J.A.Q. Royal George Cabaret, Chicago. 6 October 2001.

At the end of the lively prologue for The Bomb-itty of Errors, a rap adaptation of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, the troupe asks, "Is it drama? Is it tragedy?" In response, they proclaim, "It's whatever we want it to be." How very apt this definition is becomes increasingly clear in the verbal gymnastics, physical zeal, and parody that follow.

Originating at NYU's Department of Drama as a student project, running Off-Broadway for seventeen months and winning both an Outer Critics Circle Award and Jury Prize for best theatre at the HBO-US Comedy Arts Festival, Bomb-itty moved to Chicago's Royal George Cabaret theatre in June 2001 where it won the prestigious Jefferson Award for Best Production. Gregory Qaiyum (also one of its authors), Aaron Anderson, Charles Anthony Burks, and John Hoogenakker play twelve characters. J.A.Q., the show's original composer and accompanist, also continues on in the Chicago production. All five men demonstrate remarkable physical and vocal performance muscle.

The intimate Cabaret theatre helps create a nearly claustrophobic atmosphere well suited to this production. Graffiti-adorned sheet metal, the mainstay of the set design, wraps around the entire room. The pulsating rap of the dialogue along with J.A.Q.'s charged blend of turntable and vocals add hip-hop flavor. Pointed references to audience members, a well-timed joke about the convention of the aside, and insistent calls for audience participation add to the sensation of being crammed into an urban alleyway.

Danger and human aggression are conspicuously absent from this fast-paced, inner-city environment, and in their place is a nearly relentless good-naturedness. A closer look at the graffiti reveals plays upon names taken from Shakespeare. Visual humor abounds, perhaps reaching its apex in the scene in which the long lost mother of the twins appears just in time to ensure a happy ending. Rather than living in the simple abbey devised by Shakespeare, this Abbess (played by Qaiyum) resides in a "sports nunnery." A whistle dangles from the heavy wooden cross around her neck and the word "GOD," repeated over and over, lines the cuffs of her robe. Her hat is both a baseball cap worn backwards and, with the help of an extremely enlarged bill, a starched white nun's veil. Such clever collision of images hints at social commentary—in this case suggesting the misplaced worship of sports; more keenly, however, unlikely combinations enable the production to negotiate between comedy that amuses and that which offends.

In keeping with Shakespeare's original, the adaptation treats light-heartedly human bumbling, dissembling, the impulse toward infidelity and a string of jokes about obesity. Bomb-itty adds heavy doses of humor based on ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. Qaiyum throws himself wholeheartedly into his performance of MC Hendelberg, an overblown stereotype of a Hasidic Jew bedecked with ridiculous glasses and bobbing black ringlets. Charles Anthony Burks embraces exaggerated portrayals of Dr. Pinch as a Rastafarian drug dealer and Desi, a flamboyant prostitute emphasizing her racial attributes. John Hoogenakker, in the guise of [Begin Page 309] an obnoxious Irish cop (a perfect fit for the Windy City version of the play) allows for no timidity in the delivery of an extended and metaphor-rich monologue about the need to defecate and relishes a scene in which the cop avails himself of various clichés from the repertoire of jokes about sodomy in prison. In the obligatory denouement scene, the troupe engages in a lively exchange about their newfound understanding of earlier complications; and one of them interjects excitedly, "Now I understand why you asked me to have sex behind that dumpster." Like the prison jokes, this reference draws upon the sleaziest images associated with sex between men. Not surprisingly, the production also renders gender difference with...