The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare

seen in the Everglades Gardens, Leura (NSW) on 10 January 2026

Sport for Jove presented their annual outdoor summer Shakespeare production in various venues this year, including the atmospheric Everglades Gardens in Leura, in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. On a perfect summer evening, mercifully made cooler by incoming breezes after an extremely hot day, Damien Ryan's and George Banders' production of The Comedy of Errors proved a delightful choice of play, its comic plot of mistaken identities and unexpected reunions bolstered by some inspired physical comedy and enhancements to the text.

In a timely reminder of the plight of refugees in the modern world, the directors decided to open proceedings with a speech that is rarely performed: the address to the London mob pleading the case of "strangers", delivered by Sir Thomas More from Act One scene 6 of the play of that name. Sir Thomas More is a collaborative play, but this scene is known to have been written by Shakespeare, and the speech asks the incensed Londoners to put themselves in the strangers' shoes - to imagine how they would feel if they were exiled - before condemning the influx of refugees.

This all adds weight to Egeon's long speech explaining why he, a merchant of Syracuse, has come to Ephesus, when the two cities are mutually excluding each other's citizens from visiting. The prospect of his imminent execution for transgressing this law hangs (lightly it must be admitted) over the increasingly manic proceedings of the day, to be removed only by the final twist of the plot when all the errors are explained away and Egeon's family is fortuitously made whole again.

Blessed with (unrelated) actors who, thanks to physical style and costume, could plausibly be mistaken for one another, and unexpectedly more prominent roles for the sisters Adrian and Luciana (the latter fantastically fit and clearly a force to be reckoned with), the production proceeded to milk the play's comic confusions with great verve and energy, providing a wonderful evening's entertainment.

The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare 

and

A Company of Rascals

by Phil Porter

seen at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford on 24 and 25 July 2025 

The Guildford Shakespeare Company has created a fascinating double bill directed by Joanna Read and designed by Neil Irish, whereby a new play by Phil Porter, A Company of Rascals, is entwined round Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. After a scene-setting prologue which takes place on the banks of the River Wey outside the theatre, the Comedy is enacted in the main auditorium. Audiences for both plays see the new prologue and the Comedy's first scene, after which those seeing Rascals leave the auditorium and are taken to three different locations nearby to watch what the characters of the Comedy are imagined to be doing when they are not on stage; the two audiences are reintegrated for the final scene of the Comedy in which "all is revealed".

Shakespeare's play involves proliferating misunderstandings when two sets of identical twins, each separated in infancy due to a complicated shipwreck, are continually mistaken for each other not only by the residents of Ephesus where one of each pair lives as master and servant, but also by each other, because the other pair (also a master and servant) have arrived unexpectedly in town. By an improbable sleight of hand, which can't be called into question without destroying the whole basis of the farce, each master has retained the name Antipholus, and each servant the name Dromio, and each named twin dresses alike, thus allowing all the mistakes (or errors) to occur until finally all four are on stage together - and even then there is still room for confusion. 

The new play, set variously in the Centaur Inn (where the visitors have chosen to stay), in Doctor Pinch's premises, and in the Porpentine (where the resident Antipholus has dined when unable to enter his own house), capitalises on the mistaken identities wherever possible, but also follows the progress of the golden chain commissioned by the Ephesian Antipholus through many more hands than merely the goldsmith and the visiting Antipholus as seen in the Comedy, and also follows the continuing misfortunes of Egeon, the elderly Syracusan merchant arrested at the beginning of the play. Where the Comedy relies on chance meetings and displays of verbal wit, Rascals introduces madcap physical comedy with swapped bags, outright chicanery, and bravura charlatanry.

The cast of twelve expertly manages to perform both plays at once (though the audience of course can only see one of them at a time), aided in the case of Comedy by some extended pauses between scenes which are gloriously filled with 1960s pop songs (it's a modern-dress production). Cleverly, the new play focusses more on the minor characters of the Comedy, giving particular prominence to the jailer, and ludicrously making him the twin brother of Doctor Pinch to explain cast doubling, and introducing a few new characters to fill out the town scene.

Fortuitously I saw Comedy first and Rascals second, which I think is probably the most satisfactory order: the new play enriches the older even in retrospect, and its fast-paced double-dealings and general context require familiarity with the Comedy for maximum effect. The two together made for a really enjoyable theatrical experience.