Christian Conn and Greg Jackson

Photo: Gerry Goodstein 2008

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Posted: Mon., May 5, 2008, 2:55pm PT

The Comedy of Errors

(F. M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater, Madison, N.J.; 308 seats; $53 top)

A Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey presentation of a play in two acts by William Shakespeare. Directed by Stephen Fried.

By Robert L. Daniels

The Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey opens its 46th season with the Bard's early farce, "The Comedy of Errors." Director Stephen Fried, in his Garden State debut, has staged a boisterous production, infused with lunatic high spirits. He has harnessed the foolish merriment and knockabout slapstick with a roistering sense of pace, peopled with delightfully cartoonish characters.

The keenly choreographed comedy finds a pair of confused twins and their equally troubled servants becoming embroiled with a pair of fetching sisters, confused merchants, cops of the Keystone variety, pickpockets, scrubby street beggars, a dubious nun and

a foxy hooker.

The thesps, who appear in summery modern dress, play off each other with a delicate balance of style and farce. Christian Conn , as Antipholus of Syracuse, and Derek Wilson, as Antipholus of Ephesus, are the hapless twins once separated by a shipwreck and now suffering an identity crisis. Nick Cordileone and Greg Jackson make their bumbling servants properly harried and foolish.

The sisters, Adriana and Luciana, are portrayed by a fiery, discontented Melissa Condren and a fetching Julia Coffey. The blowzy goldsmith (John Ahlin) is very funny, as is the silly conjurer (James Michael Reilly), while Mary Dierson's nun offers a tidy explanatory benediction to the mayhem.

The play is notably long on one joke, and much credit goes to Fried for investing the action with such free-spirited humorous invention and freshly conceived abandon. He never skirts the theatricality of the piece, nor its goony and ribald extravagance.

Wilson Chin's fanciful set design offers a village square topped by colored banners and clothes lines, with hot dog, balloon and newspaper vendors populating the dead-end row of comicbook tenements. With: Vladimi Versailles, Frank Copeland, Michael Pauley, Deidre Da Silva.

Set, Wilson Chin; costumes, Alexandra Gage Englund; lighting, Charlie Morrison; sound, Eric Shim; production stage manager, Kathy Snyder. Opened, reviewed May 3, 2008. Runs through May 18. Running time: 2 HOURS, 10 MIN.

Egeon - Richard Bourg

Antipholus of Syracuse .. - Christian Conn

Solinus, Dr. Pinch - James Michael Reilly

Dromio of Syracuse - Nick Cordileone

Adriana - Melissa Condren

Luciana - Julia Coffey

Antipholus of Ephesus - Derek Wilson

Dromio of Ephesus - Greg Jackson

Balthazar - Raphael Nash Thompson

Nell - Sarah Miller

Angelo - John Ahlin

Abbess - Mary Dierson

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May 9, 2008

Shakespeare's oldest comedy gets contemporary urban twist

By WILLIAM WESTHOVEN

Daily Record

The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey has a well-deserved reputation not only for staging innovative adaptations of the classics, but also for being a true teaching theater.

No production in recent memory so brilliantly illustrates both qualities better than "The Comedy of Errors," which opens the company's 46th season.

In her opening-night remarks, artistic director Bonnie J. Monte welled up with emotion as she told the audience about the show's director, Stephen Fried. A native of Madison , Fried grew up in the company's after-school, summer and volunteer programs before studying theater at Stanford and Yale.

Back in his native suburban community, Fried tricks up Shakespeare's oldest comedy with a contemporary urban muse. The ancient land of Ephesus is represented by the narrow corner of a crowded inner city. Grey brick walls are spotted with peeled posters. Apartment buildings have fire escapes and creaky wood balconies. A newsstand sells magazines and bottled water. Laundry lines crisscross from building to building.

It's a natural setting for a mix of races, religions and fashions -- all here -- to inhabit a land where outsiders are not always welcome. Certainly, people from Syracuse had best watch their back in this barrio. As the play begins, one old Syracusian is sentenced to death just for showing up. Egeon (Richard Bourg) doesn't really care, because he's given up looking for his missing wife and children.

But his tale of woe enthralls the duke (company veteran James Michael Reilly). Egeon once enjoyed a privileged life, with twin sons and another pair of orphaned twin boys he took in to attend them.

On a ship at sea, a storm sank the boat and separated the clan. Egeon escaped with one of each twin. Years later, the adult boys struck out on their own to find their lost relatives. When they failed to return, Egeon launched his own lonely search.

The tragedy quickly gives way to comedy. The duke gives Egeon one day to find a friend to pay his ransom, and 24 eventfully errant hours follow. Egeon's son, Antipholous of Syracuse (Christian Conn), arrives in town with his attendant, Dromio (Nick Cordileone); they are mistaken for their twins (Derek Wilson and Gregory Jackson), who already live there.

Conveniently, they also are named Antipholous and Dromio and dress exactly the same. The audience sees different actors playing the roles, but the brothers and the townsfolk indulge in mistaken identity. Neither twin encounters his mirror image (which would spoil the gag), but the Dromios confuse their masters, who charge them with conflicting errands. Naturally, both are beaten when they fail in their tasks.

Equally perplexed are Adriana (Melissa Condren), the wife of the resident Antipholus, and her sister, Luciana (Julia Coffey). Luciana is aghast, but flattered, by the romantic attentions of her "brother-in-law."

Further intrigue is generated by an expensive necklace, ordered by the resident Antipholus but delivered to the visitor. He cheerfully accepts the lavish gift from a jeweler, who later demands payment.

It's no surprise when Adriana hires a conjurer, Dr. Pinch (Reilly again), to expel the demons from her husband's soul. But the incompetent doctor's cures are hilariously ineffective.

Conn and Wilson are charming and funny when they need to be, but Jackson and Cordileone get the majority of laughs as the nimble, clownish Dromios. Condren, in her first time on this stage, is a bit shrill at times, but accurately portrays a wife in comic crisis. Coffey, another newcomer, is a more natural and graceful comedienne. Her reactions to Antipholus' wooing words are subtle, but priceless.

Among the large cast (19 in all), John Ahlin is full of delightful bluster as the jeweler, while Reilly, an audience favorite here for 16 years, is a perfectly ridiculous Pinch.

Fried fills scene changes with bustling streets full of people coming and going, including Egeon's comically fruitless fund-raising campaign. A final chase spills off the stage and into the audience, leading to another of Shakespeare's famous chain-reaction happy endings.

The young director hasn't quite reinvented "The Comedy of Errors," done so well here just seven years ago. But he's met the high quality standard demanded on this stage, which certainly counts as a triumph for his first try.

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May 9, 2008

Classic comedy still delivers the laughs

By C.W. WALKER

CORRESPONDENT

The observation that dying is easy but comedy is hard, variously attributed to everyone from Edmund Kean to Sir Donald Wolfit, is so often repeated because it sums up so well a theatrical truth. That is, while tragedy is universal and timeless, humor is local and often carries an expiration date.

It's not surprising, then, that director Stephen Fried is taking no chances with "The Comedy of Errors," now on stage at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, located at Drew University in Madison . They may have been rolling in the aisles at Grey's Inn the first time the play was presented for an Elizabethan Christmas revel, but these days, with too mannered an approach, Shakespeare's 400 year-old comedy might come off as museum piece.

Fortunately, that's not likely to happen with this production, which is hilarious enough to make a modern teenager laugh out loud (as my son did on opening night). "The Comedy of Errors" is the Bard's shortest and simplest play, and Fried's strategy is to keep the pace quick and the comedy broad. There are sight gags and madcap chases, double entendres and lots of rude behavior. The result is Shakespeare by way of Mel Brooks, with a bit of Marx Brothers and Keystone Cops thrown in for good measure.

But that's entirely in keeping with the wildly improbable storyline in which two sets of identical but long separated twin brothers bearing the same names and dressed in matching outfits find themselves totally by chance in the same place at the same time. That place, Ephesus , has been updated to a kind of banana republic filled with colorfully seedy characters. The Duke is now a uniformed tin pot dictator, the Courtesan is a hooker in red high heels, the merchants are definitely on the shady side, and Pinch, the conjuring schoolmaster, is a lunatic fakir with a handlebar moustache.

Predictably, Antipholus of Ephesus is constantly confused with his visiting brother, Antipholus of Syracuse, and vice versa by everyone, including Adriana, the first Antipholus' jealous Ephesian wife. The fact that the brothers are each served by one of the twin servants named Dromio only complicates matter even further and the cases of mistaken identity multiplied exponentially.

Somehow, it not only works, but works very well, due in large part to a cast of experienced players and company veterans. Christian Conn and Derek Wilson and as the Antipholus brothers don't really look all that much alike, but their duplicate mannerisms, facial expressions and sense of desperation is enough to convince us to suspend belief. The same is true for Nick Cordileone and Greg Jackson as the Dromios who get the best comedy bits, particularly Jackson, whose exasperation, both with his master and their situation, is a constant source of amusement.

In supporting roles, Melissa Condren is a formidable Adriana, while Julia Coffey provides a voice of reason as Luciana, Adrian 's more sensible sister. The reliable James Michael Reilly, who is, arguably, the theater's Most Valuable Player, does double duty as the self-important Duke and the off-the-wall Pinch.

The general wackiness is counterbalanced nicely by the poignant performance of Richard Bourg as Egeon, the hapless father of the Antipholus twins, who searches for his sons while a death sentence hangs over his head. He's a good match for Mary Dierson's Abbess, Egeon's long-lost wife who is now a nun — who eventually sorts out the entire mess (leave it to Mom).

Wilson Chin has designed a very useful set while Alixandra Gage Englund supplies the matching costumes.

I don't know if sound designer Eric Shim is also responsible for the background music reminiscent of the themes Henry Mancini used to compose for Inspector Clouseau, but it's highly appropriate and adds to the fun.

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