Summary 
A brilliant Looney Tunes cartoon live on stage. A colorful splash of pre- and post-war Hollywood - John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and James Cagney plus Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable - with wonderful touches of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, all at a Keystone-Kops pace. The four leads are played by two actors and cleverly doubled, when necessary, in various disguises. A keenly imaginative and vividly entertaining triumph.
Design
Directed by Stephen Rothman. Costumes by David Kay Mickelsen. Set by John C. Stark. Lights by J. William Ruyle. Sound by Roderick Peeples. Choreography by Kim Quinn.
Cast
Kim Ataide (Adriana), Kelly AuCoin (Balthazar), Michael Behrens (Antipholus of Ephesus/Antipholus of Syracuse), Geoffrey MacKinnon (Dromio of Ephesus/Dromio of Syracuse), Jason Maher (Angelo), Roderick Peeples (Pinch), Thomas Anthony Quinn (Egeon), Karen Renee Raymore (Luciana), Pat Simmons (Abbess), Steve Young (Solinus).
Analysis
Director Stephen Rothman disclosed in a press conference that this production of The Comedy of Errors would be easily accessible because he would "sort of trick" audiences into understanding the language. To do so, Rothman employs simplified summations spoken in modern colloquialisms, as well as liberally rewritten dialogue and explanatory asides. After lengthy or difficult passages, a character will say, "what," or "in plain English," and be given a quick recapitulation, such as "no money, no life" (1.1.25) or "men are great" (2.1.25).
The setting - 1940s Hollywood - blazes with the spirit and vaudevillian razzle-dazzle with which post-war Hollywood envisioned America. Rothman maintains a Keystone-Kops breakneck pace, with corny jokes in rapid succession and spirited performances throughout. Slapstick sound effects pepper the play, which Rothman enhances with snappy popular music from the period.
The stage features a red brick building facing a Hollywood boulevard with street signs for Romeo Drive and Sonnet Blvd. A fire hydrant and a steaming sewer grate line the street. Advertisement billboards - Pepsi-Cola, Texaco, Borden ice cream - adorn the set along with authentic posters from mid-'40s cinema such as the Captain Marvel serial, My Darling Clementine, and Out of the Past. References to the 1940s abound: Antipholus shouts, "Hi ho, Dromio, away" as he is carried off piggyback; Luciana exclaims, "Look, Betty Grable"; and a merchant who asks for 'kraut on his hot dog is shown a Nazi salute by Dromio. Rothman also recalls the 1940s California fear of air raids. Because the outdoor Ewing Manor theatre is near an airport, when a plane passes overhead, the action suddenly stops. The set is blacked out as the actors scurry for cover; sirens wail and spotlights search until the plane passes by, then the production resumes from where it left off.
The two pairs of Antipholus and Dromio are not played by the usual four actors, but by only two, Michael Behrens and Geoffrey MacKinnon, and they prove exceptional in the anchoring roles. The dapper Behrens' Antipholi are rakish like James Cagney - at one point, he even shouts, "Top of the world, Ma" - and MacKinnon's Dromios are as flustered as Lou Costello and as animated as the Three Stooges' Curly, complete with pratfalls and shuffling backward dance. The doubling requires a slew of high-speed costume changes afforded by a dazzling array of between-scenes silliness from Egeon with a tin beggar's cup, a bicycle-riding ice cream salesman being chased by a bearded "little" boy, and by street sweepers in Groucho glasses who change the set.
Both pairs of twins, attired in patriotic red, white, and blue, can be easily differentiated: the twins from Syracuse wear red shirts and red-banded hats as well as red handkerchiefs in their breast pockets; the Ephesus twins are identically attired, but they wear blue shirts, bands, and handkerchiefs.
Antipholus swaggers and at times imitates John Wayne. He first arrives in a sputtering go-cart like a miniature yellow cab. Both Dromios hoot and holler, perform handstands with leg kicks, and hold onto their endangered masters while growling and barking like dogs. The 2.2 exchange on baldness and the 3.2 interplay on the rotund Nell are delivered as nightclub comedy. The two shout, "It's Showtime," and as a yellow curtain drops across the red brick, they dance and pass Festival bookmarks to the audience. A woman in black carries a placard onstage announcing "The Antipholus and Dromio Show," and Behrens and MacKinnon then enact a '40s stand-up vaudeville team, their punch lines emphasized by drum rim shots. They make frequent apologies - "I didn't write this stuff" - and comment on the "tough house" while they banter with the audience. Their 2.2 dialogue becomes Abbott and Costello's "who's on first" routine, and during 3.2 they drop their pants and jog downstage in an exaggerated shuffle.
Rothman immediately establishes a farcical tone. The play begins with a group of hiccupping nuns wildly dancing with sailors on shore leave. When the manacled Egeon appears, he is surrounded by mobsters who wheel him onstage with a dolly, his feet in cement overshoes. Duke Solinus, a stereotypical Italian Godfather, is given a manicure and a shoeshine. The Duke is accompanied by henchmen armed with pistols and shotguns. They hurry Egeon through his rambling 1.1 speech with gunplay, but all weep with pity by its conclusion. An ominous violin case contains a violin with which a gunman plays "taps" before Egeon is presented with an Oscar statuette.
Behrens and MacKinnon are buoyed with colorful supporting performances that complement Rothman's conception of the play. Luciana, man hungry and delightfully expressive, channels Marilyn Monroe in a white dress. She walks into doors and falls down stairs, and when she steps over a sewer grate, her skirt lifts and swirls around her. Kissed by Dromio, she collapses in his arms and moans, "O Dromio, Dromio, wherefore art thou, Dromio." Balthazar resembles Jimmy Stewart, in a stuttering impersonation by Kelly AuCoin, and talk of "a merry feast" in 3.1 elicits his cry of "Mary!" from It's A Wonderful Life. His "be rul'd by me" is enforced by a Stewartesque "doggone it," and AuCoin staggers offstage past Antipholus in 4.3, repeatedly exclaiming, also from It's A Wonderful Life, "Don't you know me?" The 3.1 "disdain me" speech becomes a campy duet sung by Antipholus and Balthazar that draws spontaneous applause.
The goldsmith, officer, and merchant from 4.1 are Chico, Harpo, and Groucho Marx, respectively. Harpo punctuates comments during the scene with blasts from his horn, and Groucho, with his agile eyebrows and ever-present cigar, reveals "ducats" as the "magic word" from his game show "You Bet Your Life" as a rubber duck is thrown onstage. The squirt-gun armed Harpo arrests Antipholus with a reach-around handcuffing, but he escapes because the cuffs are attached to Harpo's fake hand. The first merchant, Peter Lorre from Casablanca, scurries offstage with papers for "Rick"; the courtesan, a Mae West lookalike, knocks the twins backward with a toss of her hip and asks for "her" spotlight; Pinch, a mad doctor with an absurd French accent, sports thick spectacles and elbow-length black rubber gloves; and the Abbess - summoned with Costello-like calls of "Hey, Abbess!" - recalls a southern belle a la Blanche Du Bois or Scarlett O'Hara.
The relentless slapstick is rife with the scatalogical. Angelo refers to Ephesus as "Feces," and when Dromio is used as a human battering ram to open Adriana's door in 3.1, he breaks wind and is dropped so matches can be struck. In 3.2, Dromio walks an invisible dog on a leash to the fire hydrant, hurrying the "dog" with a shout of "Out, damn'd spot."
Some of the humor is of an overtly sexual nature, including crotch and breast jokes and puns on arousal and orgasm. The socialite Adriana - dressed in a stunning satin pink gown with black-feathered sleeves and head-dress - is as oversexed as her sister, and both drink and smoke in frustration. When Luciana flirts with Antipholus in 3.2, she dances away and demurely sits at a distance, but she moves closer with each woo until they are crawling around each other like sexual predators.
Physical farce enhances the comedy: Luciana arrives with a chair just as Adriana sits; Dromio twice leaps with fear into the arms of Antipholus; and Luciana jumps on Dromio's back, then kicks him in the groin and steps on his hand. Charming touches are myriad. In 4.2, when Dromio tells of his master's arrest, he is tossed a skull and lapses into "Alas, poor Antipholus." There is a doughnut-eating police officer, a juggling exhibition by Dromio, the carjacking of the little taxi by a shirtless sailor, and a Jesus Saves sign at the abbey that lights up only after Dromio hits it.
The humor succeeds due to the actors' energy and Rothman's involvement of all the cast. Without a static moment, each scene plays with cartoon-like motion and noise. When Egeon indicates the many directions of his travels, the mobsters sway with each wave of his arms, and when he finally agrees to be silent, they all shout a resounding, "Yes!" When Dromio stomps the floor in frustration, the entire cast jumps into the air in response. As the Abbess sermonizes in 5.1, the other characters exclaim, "amen," "uh-huh," and "halleluia" as if they are at worship in a gospel church. When the Duke waves his revolver, everyone onstage cries out and ducks. And once Egeon and Emilia reunite, everybody begins to dance to the theme music from Gone With the Wind.
Rothman's ingenuity is most evident during the two scenes that involve both pairs of twins. For 3.1, the door of Adriana's house projects sideways toward the audience from the opening beneath the gallery. The twins from Ephesus stand stage right and Adriana poses stage left. At the opening, MacKinnon's Dromio - partially blocked by Angelo - quickly switches with an actor of the same height and who wears the same clothes, but who looks away from the audience. MacKinnon reappears in the gallery moments later as the other Dromio, now clad in a scarlet robe. When he must switch again, he withdraws and another actor wearing the same robe reappears with a newspaper held in front of his face. During another switch, noise from a servant falling downstairs distracts, and "Dromio" reappears with a metal bucket over his head and a floor mop concealing his face. MacKinnon speaks the dialogue from both Dromios, at times like ventriloquism, with his face blocked by another actor, but mostly the lines are pre-recorded and heard via the sound system, while the "fake" Dromio lip syncs.
Rothman triumphs with the 5.1 finale. "Willie's Wagon" sells hot dogs and cream pies at stage left, with actors enjoying the real items. After a disgruntled Dromio hits Antipholus in the face with a cream pie, his master responds in kind. Both actors then drift stage left, and during a diversion, switch within a doorway with actors wearing the same clothes but with cream pie concealing their faces. Behrens and MacKinnon then reappear in the gallery dressed as nuns before being returned to the stage by the Duke, and the two pairs of twins finally "reunite," one set in habits, the other pie-faced.
Rothman's production, a richly textured theatrical cartoon, is staged with cleverly accessible language and an explosion of inventiveness, and is enacted with infectious energy. The play fittingly concludes with the rousing Looney Tunes theme and the entire cast's jubilant, "That's all folks." A dizzying array of delightful concepts, brilliantly executed: an unabashed delight from start to finish.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.13, No. 4, Fall 1995.