5 things to know about Comedy of Errors at 2024 Bard on the Beach (2024)

The Comedy of Errors

When: July 2 to Sept. 21, various times

Where: Howard Family Stage, Bard on the Beach, Vanier Park

Tickets and info: bardonthebeach.org

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Puns, wordplay and slapstick straight out of the Three Stooges. It all comes to play in the Comedy of Errors.

One of Shakespeare’s most laugh-heavy tales, the story of two pairs of identical twins accidentally separated at birth plays out in the Greek city of Ephesus. There, we meet Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio as well as Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant Dromio of — you guessed it — Ephesus. Naturally, when these characters come into contact with families and friends of the twins, madcap antics ensue.

By the end of the tale, the audience sees the cast falsely accused of all manner of wrongdoings, arrested, beaten and much more before order is restored with the sets of twins reunited and social order maintained. For Bard on the Beach’s 2024 production of the play, Goblin: Macbeth co-creators Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak envision a farce that moves beyond the confines of the theatre and onto the Bard site for a unique presentation.

Rebecca Northan chatted about key themes and approaches this version of the Comedy of Errors will take. The Stratford veteran notes that this is her first take on directing this work.

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1: Directing Shakespeare: I have a considerable amount of experience around doing his work, but this is the first time I’ve done the Comedy of Errors. The rule for comedy is to have the people onstage playing it straight so the audience gets the opportunity to laugh. You can’t have everyone going crazy can you? Or maybe you can, because the whole master and servant thing comes right from classical comedia right into the British comic tradition.

2: Two sets of twins, two actors: One of the first things about the play is you have a proposed cast of two sets of twins, but have to do it with two for budget’s sake. But that becomes really fun for the two actors getting to play four people between them. As a director, you have to think about them as four slightly different personalities teased out in the text and my job is to squeeze those out while also keeping the audience in the loop of which twin is which in which particular scene. We only have eight actors for all the parts, so there is a lot of doubling up.

3: The conundrum of the Comedy of Errors: It’s all about mistaken identity and what it does to you and how weird it is when you don’t have any idea what is going on. It was based on an earlier work by the Roman playwright Plautus, which only had one set of twins. So educated audience members at the time would have been familiar with that work and aware that Shakespeare was doubling up, kind of like a very different cover version of a song.

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4: Beach vibes: Bard has this term that they apply to the whole experience of presenting under the tent as high-end camping. There is going to be weather, critters, wind, bugs and you just roll with it. Plus, for this version, the minute you step outside the tent you will be immersed in ancient Greece. The audience can get a drink at the Tiger bar mentioned in the text, there will be a selfie station and local artisans have been invited to come and set up booths outside the tent. All are encouraged to wear their best togas and take you out of Vancouver in 2024 and transport you to ancient Ephesus.

5: The hard pants versus snugs theatre: We increasingly find in theatre that if you are asking folks to put their hard pants on and leave home, you need to provide a full experience. So this is a chance to wear your toga and dive in and get a 360 degree theatrical experience. We cooked up this idea a few months ago and I pitched it to the front-of-house teams saying I have an idea to triple your workload, what do you think? They went for it right away and had 85 applicants for the market, so I’m excited to see how it goes. Come early, wear you finest toga, browse, shop and enjoy a drink.

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sderdeyn@postmedia.com

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