The Comedy of Errors (Propeller Shakespeare). William Shakespeare

Chance

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE		their twin servants	Will Featherstone
DROMIO OF EPHESUS			Matthew McPherson

      ADRIANA, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus James Tucker

      LUCIANA, her sister Arthur Wilson

      BALTHASAR, a merchant Lewis Hart

      ANGELO, a goldsmith David Acton

      NELL, the kitchen-maid Alasdair Craig

      OFFICER Richard Pepper

      COURTESAN Matthew Pearson

      PINCH, an exorcist Darrell Brockis

      AEM ILIA, the Lady Abbess Alasdair Craig

       Other parts played by members of the Company.

      It was subsequently presented at:

      Belgrade Theatre, Coventry

      Theatre Royal, Nottingham

      The Lyric, The Lowry, Salford

      Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury

      Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames

      Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham

      Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne

      Théâtre de Marseille – La Criée

      King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

      National Theatre Craiova, Romania

      Theatre Royal, Plymouth

      Municipal Theatre, Istanbul, Turkey

      Theatre Royal, Brighton

      Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

      Globe Theatre, Neuss, Germany

       PRODUCTION TEAM

      Director Edward Hall

      Designer Michael Pavelka

      Lighting Designer Ben Ormerod

      Music Propeller

      Sound David Gregory

      Additional Music Direction Jon Trenchard

      Text adapted by Edward Hall & Roger Warren

      Associate Director Dugald Bruce-Lockhart

      Assistant Director Ellen Havard

      Costume Supervisor Laura Rushton

      Production Manager Nick Ferguson

      Company Manager Helen Drew

      Stage Manager Nick Hill

      Deputy Stage Manager Eleanor Randall

      Assistant Stage Manager Janine Bardsley

      Wardrobe Mistress Bridget Fell

      Lighting on Tour Tom White

      Assistant to the Editors Angie Kendall

      General Manager Nick Chesterfield

      Development Manager Cathy Baker

      Executive Producer Caro MacKay

      The UK tour was funded by the Arts Council of England, and presented in conjunction with the Touring Partnership.

      Propeller

      Propeller is a theatre company inspired by Jill Fraser, which began life at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, Berkshire in 1995. Since then we have been touring Shakespeare all over the world and have now grown in scale whilst still managing to retain the close-knit family feel that has always been such an important part of our work. We like to mix a rigorous approach to the text with a modern physical aesthetic. We have been influenced by mask, animation, classic and contemporary film and music from all ages.

      Propeller always places the actor at the centre of the story-making process, which is exactly how it was in Shakespeare’s day. The Elizabethans were denied the modern luxuries of elaborate sets and lighting, instead relying on the skills of the actors themselves to help imagine the plays on stage in every way they could. And so it is with us. A Propeller actor is as likely to find himself shifting scenery, singing or playing rock and roll guitar, as he is to be playing his part on stage in a scene. Over the years, actors with many different skills have passed through the company, from tap dancing champions to highly skilled singers and musicians. Our work has become more and more intricate, needing choreography, musical arrangements and fight direction. At no time have we ever used an outside choreographer or composer to help us with this work. It is all generated from within the company, giving them true ownership of the work they are creating. These editions of some of the texts we have performed are designed to give the reader an idea of how we approached each production from text choices down to doubling schemes, design and music.

      Edward Hall

      Farce And Humanity:

      The Comedy of Errors

      The Comedy of Errors was performed, presumably by Shakespeare’s company, at Gray’s Inn on 28 December 1594. Was it then a new play? The London theatres were closed, because of a virulent outbreak of the plague, from July 1592 to April 1594, during which time Shakespeare wrote his two narrative poems; he may also have written Errors at that time, ready for performance when the theatres reopened. Errors used to be regarded as an even earlier work, perhaps written for local performance before he left Stratford; but this view reflected a low estimate of the play, and modern performances have shown it to be a brilliant piece of theatrical mechanism; it is hard to see how this could have been achieved without the experience of working in the professional theatre.

      Shakespeare’s main source is the Menaechmi by the classical dramatist Plautus; but he made substantial changes. To begin with, he gave the twin masters of the Menaechmi twin servants, thus doubling the potential for confusion and mistaking. Then he moved the setting from Epidamnum to Ephesus, which was famous – or notorious – in the ancient world, and in the Bible, as a centre of witchcraft, so that Antipholus of Syracuse half-expects strange things to happen to him.

      But Shakespeare’s most crucial, and most personal, changes modify the tone of his original. He enclosed the central confusions within a framework – the story of Aegeon and his ultimate reunion with his wife and family – taken from a very different kind of story, the legend of Apollonius of Tyre, to which he returned at the end of his career in Pericles. Still more significant, he introduced an element of romance into the mistakings, in the wooing of Luciana by Antipholus of Syracuse, where the language looks forward to his later comedies, and connects with his own love poetry in the Sonnets. Antipholus calls Luciana ‘mine own self’s better part’, a phrase which echoes Shakespeare’s calling his lover ‘the better part of me’ in Sonnets 39 and 74. His interest in twins, both here and in Twelfth Night, may also derive from personal considerations. He was the father of twins, and this may have informed Antipholus of Syracuse’s sense of loss and personal disorientation when separated from his twin:

      I to the world am like a drop of water

      That in the ocean seeks another drop,