The Comedy of Errors, and: The Tempest (review)

The London 2012 Olympic Games led to a plethora of accompanying cultural festivals, of which the World Shakespeare Festival 2012 was one of the most prominent. This festival aimed to celebrate Shakespeare’s position as the world’s playwright, and many major UK arts organizations—including the Royal Shakespeare Company—participated in it not only by staging Shakespeare productions in other languages, but also by exploring what Shakespeare’s plays tell us about interactions between different cultures. Within this framework, the RSC brought together three of Shakespeare’s plays to celebrate the World Shakespeare Festival: The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest. Under the title What Country, Friends, Is This? (also presented as The Shipwreck Trilogy), the RSC stated it explored themes of “migration, displacement, exile, shipwreck and the discovery of brave new worlds.” The link among the three plays—an early, middle, and late play, with long intervals between them—is tenuous; based on the shipwreck argument, Pericles and even A Winter’s Tale might have been added as well. Of these two, Pericles was added, but not until the London run, and it was not included in the commercial billing of the Shipwreck Trilogy.

However, in choosing one ensemble, one responsible artistic director (David Farr, who directed the latter two while Palestinian Amir Nizar Zuabi directed the first), one similar set, and one general vision for these three plays, the RSC made a brave and original choice to link the three plays thematically. Although each play can be seen and enjoyed on its own, the RSC argued that they would work best when seen together as an “epic trilogy,” adopting an approach similar to the Gesammtkunstwerk of the 2008 RSC history cycle. In tying together the three plays, traces of the latter two would have to be visible in the first and vice versa in order for the perceived “epic journey” to work on stage. Effectively, this would imply a journey through the themes of migration and exile, starting with The Comedy of Errors. It would also imply that the darker undertones of Twelfth Night and The Tempest would already have to be visible in the generally more farcical Comedy of Errors. This approach might also help resolve some of the traditional problems directors have faced in reconciling the farce and absurdity of Comedy of Errors with modern-day taste.

Fig. 4.

Felix Hayes as Dromio of Ephesus and Bruce Mackinnon as Dromio of Syracuse in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2012 production of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi. Photo courtesy of Keith Pattison.

Both the migration and the darkness were recurring elements in this Comedy of Errors. The opening scene placed the action dockside, with cranes, crates, and flotsam, a background made of driftwood rising into a big wave, and real water at the left front edge of a wooden boarded stage; with variations, the same set was used in the other two shipwreck plays. Today, the dockside—even more so than the airport—is associated with illegal...