By Tasha & Ry (The Twins!)
Link: https://www.patreon.com/shakesceneshakespeare (sign up here to access this and loads more brilliant plays, they’re doing the whole lot!)
Available until: Unknown
We love this because it is about twins! And what is even better than one set of twins? Twin sets of twins!
This is a really funny play. It doesn’t all make sense because I think if you go looking for your twin somewhere and get mistaken for someone else then it’s just like obviously your twin isn’t it? But we don’t think that matters. I think it’s more important for plays to be entertaining than it is for them to make sense. Making sense is like so overrated.
The other play about twins Twelfth Night doesn’t really make sense either because obviously Viola is a girl! But we don’t care about that either, we just like watching Olivia trying to get in her britches while Orsino’s wondering why he’s randomly turned gay! Being gay is totally fine, Tasha is gay but if you’re one orientation your whole life and suddenly a really fit member of another sex comes along it is a bit like ok this is WEIRD.
But this is about The Comedy of Errors and this is a really funny production (even though it’s sad in a way, like imagine growing up and not knowing your twin, that would just be like the WORST.) With the Zoom close ups you can see none of the twins are really all that identical but it’s also easier to tell them apart which is more important really because you don’t want the audience to be as confused as the characters. I think now everyone’s all woke it wouldn’t come as a total shock if someone decided that twin roles could only be played by twins because like how can anyone else know what it’s like to be a twin? But we think that’s silly. We would love to see real twins doing these roles but it’s more important to have good actors who can read Shakespeare and do comedy and even though twins are the best, not all twins have the same talents. And seriously who wouldn’t want to be a twin for the day?
This play is famous for being about separated twins and obviously we like the twins best but they are not the only people who get separated from someone. Egeon of Syracuse who is the two Antipholus’s dad has also got separated from his wife so there’s that going on too. In some ways that bit is sadder than the twin bit because the twins don’t remember each other because they were babies but Egeon and Emilia are married and had twins and we bet they didn’t use a turkey baster!
The Antipholus twins are played by Matt Williams and Oliver Hewett. Matt is famous for getting killed all the time but you’ll have to wait and see if he gets killed in this one, we’re not telling you! They’re really good twins because even though they’re not exactly alike with their appearance or their personality, there is a sort of resemblance with both so the nature theory obviously won there. It’s funny how they try to be quite reasonable about everything at first but things get weirder and weirder!
The Dromio twins are Dewi Hughes and Valentina Vinci. They look and sound totally different really, one’s a man and one’s a woman, one’s Welsh and one is probably Italian, one’s married to the artistic director and we hope the other one isn’t because that’s like bigamy! They’re so different but like the Antipholuses there are things in their personalities and the way they talk and move that just makes you see they’re twins even though they have different personalities. We think Valentina is like Tasha because she is quite stroppy and Dewi is like Ry because gets scared of people sometimes and Dewi is pooing his pants over Adriana! The scene at the end is just the best but no spoilers. Apparently sometimes they do it so one person plays both twins and I bet that works great in most of the scenes but the last scene is just like so big and important and having it all done by 1 actor just wouldn’t be the same so we’re really glad Shake-Scene did it with 2 actors so you’ve got like the connection.
2 great sets of twins and we totally accept the Antipholuses and the Dromios into the Twin Gang!
We think Shakespeare totally missed one funny moment though. Sometimes we go out with Ricky and Lottie who are 7 (like a big Twin Day Out) and I (Tasha) go round with Lottie and I’m like “we’re twins!” and everyone looks at us really funny but me and Lottie are both twins, we’re just not each other’s twins. That’s an extra funny confusion which Shakespeare didn’t do, it would have been funny if the 2 Ephesus or the 2 Syracuses had gone around like “we’re twins!” but Shakespeare thought of loads of funny stuff we’d never have thought of so we can’t complain too much.
Some people complain Shakespeare doesn’t do enough female characters but when he does do them they’re good. We like Bridget Randolph, she does all the emotion for Adriana really well but you also get this sense of what she’s like as a complete character. It’s not just all about the fun of being a woman with 2 husbands, it’s about a real complete human being who’s suddenly getting really confused and doesn’t know what’s going on. Tamara Ritthaler who plays Luciana is different, she seems to be enjoying it some of the time but when her brother in law (that’s what she thinks anyway) starts hitting on her she doesn’t find that funny at all! Luciana’s got a really strong powerful side which is a nice contrast with Adriana.
Everyone else plays loads of characters. Geoffrey Kirkness is a very sad Egeon of Syracuse, we usually like the young characters best but we got quite invested in him. Cal says he’d be a good King Lear. We’ve never seen it but Tasha wants to see that because she likes horror and it sounds really violent but Ry likes comedy best. Jenny Coverack plays the Abbesse, she’s like really quiet and gentle but at the same time there’s something about her performance that makes you think you need to watch yourself with her. That was good because it’s like character depth which makes her interesting. Then there’s Iain Peacock as Balthasar, Jack Birtles as the Duke of Ephesus, Thom Jackson-Wood as Angelo the Goldsmith, Aliki Chapple as the Courtesan, loads of really brilliant funny characters.
From now on these plays aren’t free to view and why
should they be, they’re professional standard plays with professional actors
and it’s a lot less than you’d pay for the ticket and transport and food. The
next is Antony & Cleopatra which you can watch on Patreon and it
should be reviewed later this month. I don’t think they’ve got twins in that
one. Antony and Cleopatra aren’t twins. Twins are close but not THAT close.
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