Playwright: William Shakespeare
At: First Folio Shakespeare Festival at Mayslake Forest Preserve, 31st
Street & Route 83 in Oak Brook
Phone: (630) 986-8067; $20
Runs through: Aug. 3
Imagine the first time that parents, anticipating a single addition to the family, beheld twins! While this historical moment remains
unrecorded, the potential for confusion presented by this sportive prank of nature has been exploited by storytellers from antiquity to
the present day. Plautus’ Menaechmi is usually regarded as the original, spawning a wealth of spin-offs, knock-offs and rip-offs since
its premiere circa 220 B.C.
Certainly Shakespeare is indebted to him for The Comedy Of Errors. Its premise: Identical twin brothers, separated as infants in a
shipwreck, now grown and sharing the same name. One of them, a citizen of Ephesus, saddled with an insecure wife and a greedy
mistress. The other, a citizen of Syracuse come to Ephesus in search of his long-lost sibling. Their valets are likewise twin brothers,
and their father faces execution (for violating trade agreements, or some such thing) unless he can raise bail money. Put it all, as this
First Folio production does, on a set with seven doors, six windows, one balcony, several rooftops and a working fountain suitable for
chasing round and dunking in, and slapstick shenanigans are sure to follow.
To be sure, they followed with a bit of initial hesitation on opening night. Some of this could be attributed to easily remedied first-
night inertia. But more cumbersome is director Alison C. Vesely’s reluctance to allow the female characters to share in the
playfulness, instead instructing Molly Glynn and Marilyn Bielby to recite their speeches in uniformly high, keening voices at robotic
classroom tempo (though Christine Gatto’s Courtezan contributes a welcome contralto to the relentlessly treble vocal spectrum, as do
baritones Robert Maher and Aaron Hunt, playing assorted Ephesians of commerce).
Of course, Glynn and Bielby still make a babelicious pair of (non-twin) sisters, garbed in Vicky J. Strei’s scrumptious gowns. And
the duo of Bruch Reed and Dominic Conti, an engaging matched set of lanky-limbed youths, flanked by Peter Riopelle and Nathan
Pease as their bantamweight servants, the four together executing movement director Michael Goldberg’s physical comedy (catch the
‘Braveheart’ reference) with alacrity and aplomb. Once the action picks up momentum, the venerable plot crosses the finish line in
triumph.