The Comedy of Errors

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

One day...

One city...

One imminent beheading...

And two sets of identical twins separated by a tumultuous thunderstorm years ago and shipwrecked in separate lands who are destined to spend their lives searching for the happiness only familial reunification can bring.

These are the ingredients for The Comedy of Errors, the wackiest and laugh-out-loud funniest play Shakespere ever wrote. In the most ridiculous farce this side of Noises Off, we meet Antipholus and Dromio, and we also meet Antipholus and Dromio, two sets of twins separated at birth who look so much alike that they cannot “be distinguished but by names” (even though they have the same name? just go with it). Add to this chaos a romantically-starved housewife, her nerdy sister, a duke cut from the cloth of a Midwestern dad, an elderly convict who keeps urging his own execution (it's honestly kinda awkward), an incompetant exorcist, and a whole host of wild characters inhabiting the strange and spooky land of Ephesus.

Join the SYT summer ensemble for a comedy with a surprisingly relevant class-conscious message, and rediscover the Bard at his greatest height of pants-peeing hilarity.

The Comedy of Errors: Director’s Note

Sometimes the most reasonable thing you can do in a dysfunctional society is be feverishly insane. Certain flawed worlds demand to be reacted to with sheer irreverent absurdity. Call it proactive social Dadaism of the funny-bone. 

James Shapiro, one of the great Shakespeareans of our time, called The Comedy of Errors “Shakespeare’s most underrated play.” This greatness comes not from its structural precision, or the brilliance of its sight-gags (though both are unimpeachable), but from the beating, tumultuous heart beneath the story’s wacky hijinks, a heart which says a better earth is possible, and that by expanding our chosen families we make the world a more equitable place in which to live. 

The play our Summer Ensemble discovered is one whose wackiness conceals an intense emotionality, and whose goofiness belies a dramatic center with a serious class and social conscience. Only in The Comedy of Errors could two long-lost twins separated at birth band together and pave the way for a brighter future. 

But ultimately like whatever. Welcome to Ephesus. Above all, let’s just have some fun.

And just for reference, a Parrothead is a Jimmy Buffett fan.  

-Lukas Brasherfons
Director, The Comedy of Errors