A wife in distress pleads with her philandering husband to remember their former happiness. A bereft father begs for recognition from the young man whom he has cause to believe is his only living son, and is coldly rejected. An introverted, emotionally cauterized young woman opens her heart to another person and is rewarded with love and affection, where previously life had only provided her punishment.
But Barbara Gaines isn't interested in any of this. The beating, lyric heart of The Comedy of Errors holds little sway for the veteran Artistic Director, found here producing the swan song of her administrative tenure at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. This rendition of Shakespeare's early farce believes the play to be of limited pleasures, and is content to skim that surface and ignore the depths or assume they don't exist.
The story is naturally pretty goofy. Wacky hijinks occur when Antipholus of Syracuse (Robert Petkoff) and Dromio of Syracuse (Ross Lehman) land on the strange shores of Ephesus and are promptly and unwittingly mistaken for their long-lost identical twins, the Ephesian Antipholus (Dan Chameroy) and Dromio (Kevin Gudahl). The general vibe is one of shtick and lulz. No one could quite accuse Gaines and team of misinterpreting their play, only of enshadowing it. One hears the title and hopes for slapstick and a happy ending preceded by extended and ridiculous mistaken identity, and all of that is delivered to the stage at CST's Courtyard Theatre. In tow is a lengthy framing-device by playwright Ron West which places the action in the context of 1940s Britain, where a mid-budget film studio is turning the play into a vehicle of much-needed wartime cheer. That extra plot works reasonably well (though MAJOR demerits for the insertion of a dunder-headed Trump joke), and neatly pads out the running time of Shakespeare's shortest play (the event at CST is about 2:40 with intermission, when, without the West material, the show could likely clock in at 90 minutes without a break).
The seasoned ensemble has its virtues. Lehman is a reliable character actor committed to imaginary reality. Chameroy passes well as a cad, and when given the opportunity, sings with the voice of a nightingale. Petkoff mines as much interiority as the situation allows, and brings a palpable sense of intellectual distress to his Syracusian twin. The production simply leaves you with a sense that you have witnessed a product that was "theatre funny," rather than real funny. The distinction being that real funny is irresistible and overwhelming, and theatre funny more a force of mechanized antics, whereby an audience automatically laughs at something it feels programmed to laugh at, and pratfalls and dick jokes are responded to out of a dutiful acknowledgement that they have happened at all. Obviously the criteria are completely different, but the average weekend at any regional comedy club would find your average theatre joke being used to wipe the floor.
Perhaps one production is too subjective and singular to encapsulate the merits of an artist's entire career, but if this Comedy of Errors can be said to sum up Gaines' approach to Shakespeare over the years in any way, it comes off as overly concerned with a type of ease-of-access that belies a deeper lack of interpretive verve. Even if you're trying to make Shakespeare a popular entertainer again (which late-period capitalism will just never allow), who cares about that if you don't believe in the joys of the Shakespeare vehicle you're attempting to bring to life? Not every Shakespeare play is a titanic achievement, but to quote Harold Bloom (Shakespeare studies' most useful punching-bag), we underestimate the bard at our own peril.
I guess I just wish Gaines had liked the play. I really think there's more to love.
