THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

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Director's Note

This early play is often dismissed for its seeming superficiality. It especially pales in comparison to the towering achievements of plays like King Lear and Hamlet.  Yet as I work on The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's most farce-like play, I'm moved and humbled by two of the sweeter more resounding themes that live within it: the yearning for family and the completion of self by finding what has been lost. In my own life, I've journeyed for reunion much like Antipholus of Syracuse. His lovely words at the end of Act 1, scene 2:

    I to the world am like a drop of water
    That in the ocean seeks another drop,
    Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
    (Unseen, inquisitive) confounds himself.

voice the primal need in this play: the need to recover the biological relatives that we are missing in order to fill the void within our hearts. It is the black hole of self-knowledge that drives this play - how can Antipholus of Syracuse truly know himself without knowing his twin and his mother?

Because of this, The Comedy Of Errors, for all its ribald humor, shares a depth and profundity that is readily found in greater works of Shakespeare. The extremity of the situation causes us to laugh and yet, for these characters, there exists great peril and even greater need for restoration. We, as an audience, are held, deliciously, at the precipice of both disaster and triumph. Taking place in the course of one day, The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare's most classically formatted play, well befitting the story's Greek roots. At the end of this single day, the lives of the characters will be changed forever, and we are there to witness it all.

Thank you for being here and for actively engaging in live theatre. May we laugh and love together and remember the joy we humans are capable of.

 

Stephanie Shine
Director