Theatre 2014 - Review Thirty

The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's Globe, London. September 2014.

After seeing this earlier in the year and being less than impressed I was nervous about seeing this play even at my favourite venue - was it going to be another Julius Caesar and play I just don't like?

It started very well with a silent mime in the style of the old Chaplin-esque slapstick comedy of a man trying to get some washing off a line.  It really was something you had to see to understand just how funny it was, made all the better by a mobile phone ringing in the audience and the actor encompassing this into his routine.

The play itself is daft, mistaken identity taken well beyond the bounds of any plausibility but as the cast seemed to be having so much fun you could over look the daft plot and just go with it.  I think that some of my dislike of the earlier production is to do with the source material but this version was so much more fun - it didn't need added smut or nuns dressed as tarts to work.

This was a short, high energy play that made a great end to the Shakespeare season this year at the Globe.  I do have two more plays to see at the venue before the action moves inside to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse but on the whole the season has been brilliant - I enjoyed a play that I never thought I'd manage to sit through (Titus) and fell in love totally with another play (Antony and Cleopatra).