THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (The Wet Mariners at the Willow Globe)*****

 

By Megan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmda4XfjOHU

Available until: Unknown

I hadn’t heard of The Wet Mariners until a few months ago but they did a production of A Midsummer Night’s ‘Stream’ on Zoom and that was so good and so funny, I was really excited when I heard about The Comedy of Errors. Especially when I found out it was staged with an audience. I love Zoom productions, but staged productions really rare and special at the moment, even when I’m watching online.

The play was performed outside. The stage was quite small and I think it might have been made of wood but I’m not sure. There wasn’t really a set but the actors did use props and it all worked really well. They had an audience too and there was a bit of audience participation and they all seemed to have lots of fun.

They start off with a non-Shakespearean introduction which is really good. It explains everything really well and I think it would be really helpful for people who haven’t seen a Shakespeare play before or haven’t seen this play and find the idea of it a bit scary. I understand that. I think I’ve seen most of Shakespeare’s plays now but there were a few I felt a bit scared of before I watched them because I thought they’d be hard to understand (and none of them are really easy). I think this introduction would have been reassuring if I didn’t know the play and I was worried. But even if you do know the play like me (I think I’ve seen it twice on Zoom now) it is still a really funny introduction.

I was a bit worried when I found out the play has only four actors, three men and a woman. This production is quite confusing already with lots of mistaken identity and if it’s not just the twins who look alike that could have got really confusing. But it didn’t. The actors are so good and they always do enough so the differences between the characters are really obvious. I noticed even the two Dromios were different when they had the conversation together at the end. Both Dromios were played by the same actor but it worked really well. There isn’t a cast list with the video but some of the biographies on the Wet Mariners website mention The Comedy of Errors so I think they must be the actors I saw and I recognise some of them.

James Corrigan is especially hilarious as Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse and he has a really good connection with Jamie Wilkes who is also really good as Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse. Katherine Jack is lovely as Adriana and funny as the Officer and Tom Syms brings all seven of his characters to life, especially Dr Pinch, Luciana and the Courtesan.

There are also ad-libs and little moments in modern English but I really liked these bits. They are really funny and completely in the spirit of the play and I think that’s a big part of what makes this production so great. The actors enjoy messing around and having fun but they also know they’re doing a Shakespeare play and they take it seriously (even when they’re being really funny) and want it to be a really good production of a great play and that’s exactly what it is.