The Comedy of Errors

After seventeen long months of government-mandated restrictions on large gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, outdoor theater productions were allowed to reopen in New Jersey in the summer of 2021. Director Brian Crowe wisely selected The Comedy of Errors to welcome audiences back to the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s Outdoor Stage at the Greek Theatre on the campus of St. Elizabeth University in Convent Station, New Jersey. With the theme of reuniting people after a long separation, this play was the perfect offering to all who missed attending in-person performances, and who yearned for that magical connection between actors and audience that can only occur within a live theater setting. The performance was an evening of fun and laughter for both actors and audience, delivered at what was for all but the last scene a rapid-fire pace and culminating in a shared sense of joy, so that, for two brief hours, the world seemed to be as it had been before the pandemic.

The set was minimal, consisting of a back wall painted in varying shades of light blue with touches of pink and white to resemble the sky with a few clouds. At the center of this wall were double doors that formed the entrance to the abbey. On the wall to either side of these doors hung large, parchment-like sheets proclaiming that anyone who came to Ephesus from Syracuse would be killed if he could not produce the necessary money to redeem his freedom. Near either end of the wall, openings provided entrances and exits for the characters. Eight free-standing, single-width doors painted in various shades of blue with white molding were spaced across the stage in a straight line. Except for the door that served as the entry to Antipholus of Ephesus’s house, none of the other doors opened. The doors that could not open served mostly as props around which the characters would run and behind which they would hide. Antipholus of Ephesus’s door was split horizontally into separate top and bottom halves (a “half-door”), with a small peephole opening in the center of its top half. These openings were exploited for comedic effect, serving as the portals through which the heated exchange of words and of other less civil expressions of sentiment between the Dromios was conducted (3.1). There was no stage furniture but for a chair on which Luciana, reading a book, sat at one point.

A challenge for any outdoor production is how to deal with intrusions coming from the surroundings. In this instance, these interruptions came from the overhead noise of airplanes, including small corporate jets, taking off or landing at a nearby airport. These occurrences were handled by one of the actors yelling “Airplane!” at which point stagehands would emerge from the wings bearing signs that stated, “Flying Machine Interval,” and the actors would break into a line dance to waltz music, with the audience spontaneously clapping in time to the music. Once the noise abated, the action of the play resumed.

Crowe chose to use the same actors for each of the respective pairs of twins: Jeffrey Marc Alkins to portray the Antipholuses, and Billie Wyatt, a female actor, to portray the Dromios. For all but the final scene, when both sets of twins had to be onstage, which twin was present was emphasized through differences in costuming. When Antipholus of Syracuse arrived in Ephesus wearing a long brown outer coat, an anonymous person outfitted him with a nineteenth-century-style long gray coat, a yellow cravat, and black bowler hat so that he might better fit in with Ephesian society. As Antipholus of Ephesus, he was clad in a navy blue long coat and a black top hat, and he carried a gold-headed black cane. Gray and blue plaid pants and knee-high black leather boots were worn by both characters in order to facilitate quick costume changes. The costume differences for the Dromios amounted to changes of vests and head coverings that were subtly distinguishable from one another. In the final scene, the Ephesian set of twins was portrayed by members of the company who were clad in the Ephesian style and who kept their backs to the audience.

Alkins’s Antipholus of Syracuse was like an innocent child whose face expressed wonderment and joy at the warm welcome accorded him by the locals, who were strangers to him. He did not question their motives; he just went along with whatever and whomever, including when summoned to dine at a house declared to be his residence by a woman who claimed to be his wife. That attitude changed abruptly, however, when he was beset by Dr. Pinch and his four zany assistants. Fearing they were in the presence of conjurors and witches, the two Syracusans suddenly wanted to depart the town as quickly as possible. As Antipholus of Ephesus, Alkins came across as a self-assured, prosperous citizen, confident of his place in Ephesian society, at least until barred from his own house as an impostor. His indignation at that treatment led him to seek the company of a courtesan upon whom he bestowed a chain he had commissioned for his wife.

Next to the tall and muscular Antipholuses, the petite Billie Wyatt as the Dromios appeared impish or elf-like. She was hyperactive, augmenting her character’s speech with exaggerated gestures and body movements that lent comedic emphasis to whatever she was saying. One of the most memorable moments in the play was Wyatt’s description, told as Dromio of Syracuse to Antipholus of Syracuse, of the kitchen wench of prodigious “ell and three quarters” breadth, who had amorous designs on him (3.2.109). Wyatt augmented her verbal description with broad gestures to convey to the audience a hilarious and vivid image of this sweaty, greasy, globular entity.

As for the female characters, Adriana was a fashionable upper-class lady who was capable of a few sexually suggestive references through subtle naughty gestures and innuendoes. Her elegant dress and jewelry indicated her position in Ephesian society. Her bookish, bespectacled sister, Luciana, was prim and proper and set against marriage, at least until the resolution when she accepted the advances of Antipholus of Syracuse. Unlike the broad comedy favored by the other actors, Ellie Gossage and Katja Yacker were rather staid anchors as Adriana and Luciana, respectively. Marcella Cox shifted deftly among several roles as she portrayed the courtesan as well as the Abbess, who is also the wife of Egeon and mother of the Antipholuses. As the courtesan, she wore an orange satin gown with a full petticoat skirt, over which a nun’s black habit was thrown when she shifted to her role as the abbess. An innovation in this production was to present the character of the 2nd Merchant as a saber-bearing stern Russian woman named Stroganoff, whose costume included a tall fur hat, fur-trimmed coat, and pants. The male pronouns that referenced the character in the text were changed to female pronouns to reflect this switch in gender. When introduced at one point by the goldsmith to another character, she clapped her right hand to her opposite shoulder by way of salute and uttered a perfunctory “Vodka!”

A highlight of the production was the scene in which Dr. Pinch and his entourage of four minions came running down the aisle and onto the stage. Light blue robes were worn by all, and Pinch’s was covered with a variety of alchemical symbols. The assistants wore antique goggles and bore various instruments of torture, including an old-fashioned bug sprayer and a giant syringe. Pinch wore a Cavalier hat, carried a cross, and covered his face initially with a sixteenth-century red-leather bird-beak plague-doctor mask, which seemed highly appropriate since we were still in a pandemic and some members of the audience were wearing masks. On removing the mask, his cross-eyed visage conveyed an image of demonical madness, which would have been terrifying were it not so comical. When it was decided that Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse were to be bound with a rope, a frantic scene broke out with everyone on stage boisterously running about helter-skelter. Pinch interrupted his chase of the two “patients” to jump rope with two of his assistants spinning the rope. In the end, the two Syracusans sought refuge in the abbey, with the Abbess granting them sanctuary, even defying the duke’s request that they be handed over. Thus began the ultimate scene.

The company of The Comedy of Errors, dir. Brian B. Crowe. The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, 2021. Photo by Avery Brunkus, courtesy of The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.

That scene, as mentioned earlier, was played at a much slower pace than the previous stages of the play, with sentimental music playing in the background. The revelations were made; the family was reunited; Antipholus of Syracuse and Luciana became a couple; the players all passed through the open doors of the abbey to contemplate what had transpired; and the two Dromios were left alone on stage. Each insisted via gestures that the other one go in first, until they decided to hold hands and enter side-by side. They were the last to exit as the doors closed slowly behind them, bringing to a sweet end this delightful celebration of coming together at last after a long separation.