"How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!" We came into the world like brother and brother.
And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.
After the brilliant, truly innovative production of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” for “Headlong”, which forced all critics to admit that a new star has appeared in the list of modern English theater directors, Blanche McIntyre does not just turn to the comedy classics of William Shakespeare, but does so in the “Globe” – a place that meets all the directorial aspirations of the great playwright, and is guided primarily by correspondence to the original, and not current trends leading to the fact that in “Venice merchants” Africans play in Hacechensky.
Any admirer of William Shakespeare knows that the plot of "The Comedy of Errors" is formally correlated with the action of the play "Twelfth Night" realized a few years after the supposed date of production. But if, with the help of a precisely calculated confusion in the story of Sebastian and Viola, the author considers only at first glance simple, seemingly frivolous because of the comedic presentation, questions of love, morality and the pure convention of the impossibility of a romantic connection between Count Orsino and his young and ardent servant, then the story of two pairs of twins from Syracuse and Ephesus, even without the philosophical crescendo that makes up the tone of the Twelfth Night, but exhaustively explains the reason why the expression “comedy” became a negative one.
Each scene of the Comedy of Errors is masterfully executed relative to the completeness of a specific, individual sketch, ready for use as an independent sketch, and the action as a whole moves from stage to stage with a progressive increase in the amount of humor and the creation of a general atmosphere of sparkling fun. In addition, the Comedy of Errors, being radically revised and supplemented with parallels with the current version of the Latin comedy Menaechmi at the time of writing. Plauta, does not contain the characteristic dictate of the profoundness of verse over artistic action, some ancient in nature of sublimity and pathos (in the true sense of the word) style, strongly criticized by many readers and researchers of William Shakespeare’s work, who appreciate the more entertaining, rather than axiological component of the theater, and art as a whole.
Among Shakespeare’s other plays, The Comedy of Errors, which is the absolute, reference type of position comedy that Moliere would envy, does not have enough plot bases, potentially convertible into direct interaction with the public. If the proud Saturnian could rise in his podium right in the middle of the crowd of spectators, and Bertram and his comrades - to go on a reconnaissance and return to his father's house, pushing elbows, pushing to the stage through the same audience, then for Antifolus, Dromio and other inhabitants of this part of the dramatic space, the set of options is extremely limited. But, Blanche McIntyre finds a way out and adds an introductory scene with Dromio of Ephesus, and generally reworks his role, allowing it to constantly appeal any phrases to the public.
In addition, McIntyre, who is known to work with actors very carefully, not only studying the range of their capabilities, but also establishing friendly relations with everyone, solves the question of communication with the audience, necessary when it comes to Shakespeare’s comedy, intonationally highlighting hotel lines, perhaps not emphasizing the storyline, but representing refrains in the direction of each particular viewer. For example, a slightly shifted emphasis in a sentence containing the phrase “like the globe” caused an instantaneous delight of understanding and belonging, clothed in the form of an admiring sigh.
Decent actors are the key to the success of even the dubious quality of the play, just as bad ones are the guarantee of the failure of the most brilliant. In the case of Shakespeare’s creations, the requirements for performers are increased many times, since the other attributes of the game are added to the need to comply with the same Shakespearean rhythm (without which what is said turns into an irregular set of strangely located words, and its excessive pedaling leads to inappropriate grotesqueness), as well as the ability to withstand the overall saturation of the action and individual hilarious scenes built mostly on the game, rather than verbalization, which is especially important in the case of the “Comedy of Errors”.
This is one of the reasons why the Globe stage is closed to celebrities with glossy covers who do not understand such subtleties, but the genuine talent, which is not popular among the masses, always gets the love of connoisseurs of true talent, as well as the possibility of joining the unofficial permanent troupe, from which Peter Hamilton Dyer is present in the Comedy of Errors, All four main characters played by Matthew Needham, Simon Harrison, Brody Ross and Jamie Wilkes, do not cause any complaints, only instant sympathy.
Needham and Wilkes, who had no competitors from late August to early October 2014, were particularly interesting. The first topic was how the Globe transformed him, turning him from a rather gloomy and heavy young man into a courageous handsome man, first making him a majestic emperor in Titus Andronicus, and then offering a completely different role of the stupid but cute Anifolus. Wilkes is completely unrecognizable in the image of the exaggeratedly naive and good-natured, balancing on the verge of caricature Dromio, among other things performing real acrobatic tricks that make the audience freeze with excitement for the actor, and for the fact that he can stumble and fall directly on their head. And although it is generally believed that the central role is formally absent in the Comedy of Errors, it is Matthew and Jamie who compete for it in the production of Blanche McIntyre.
Fun, farce, sympathy, sincere experiences, instant love for the characters of the play and understanding all their aspirations - this is an approximate list of what the Comedy of Errors offers, which, according to some evidence, was originally called Mistakes. Unfortunately, the modern audience often comes to the theater to see the plays of William Shakespeare, or to read them, sitting at a desk, unprepared, not having a knowledge base sufficient to recognize and analyze the totality of not just meanings, but historical parallels included by the author in the works, and therefore misses something not from the emotional, but from the intellectual component.
Thus, it is logical to assume that few will recognize in the inexplicable and seemingly contrived confrontation of merchants of different cities from the Comedy of Errors an allusion to the French religious wars of the second half of the 16th century. But you can consider the play as an excuse to fill in the information gaps and then look at what is happening from a different angle. However, William Shakespeare never aimed at formal education, engaged in the formation of morals and the education of feelings. And Blanche McIntyre understands the author’s methodology as best as possible, not striving for kitsch and false novelty, but telling a famous story, using old-fashioned techniques that should rather be called classical, giving the public perhaps one of the rare true and, at the same time, modern readings of the Comedy of Errors.