-
-
Ad Space
(728 x 90)
Published on 7/25/08
Survey
Sign up today!
This could have been a disaster. Seriously, turning The Comedy of Errors into a play within a play—in this case a 1940s backstage bauble about an attempt to film Shakespeare’s farce in the middle of the London Blitz? Shakespeare, one could sniff, doesn’t need metahumor.
Luckily, the capable, confident West is in charge of the adaptation, and his inventive spirit seems to bring out the best in Gaines as well. Sure, we could quibble that the scenario seems unlikely; that there’s no sufficient explanation of why the film’s crew members are all enlisted as actors; or that there’s practically no connection between the framing device and the play itself, which might as well have been any of Shakespeare’s comedies.
But, while we watch it play out, our right brain drowns out our left: Who can take issue with the realism of any version of a play in which two sets of separated twins are given the same names? This production is such a lark that our questions are mostly forgotten along the way. The performances are terrifically detailed, all the way from Lehman’s two-faced work as both the droll director and one of the confused slaves, to Kane and Krill’s dueling fops, to background Easter eggs like the off-camera flirtation of Angela Ingersoll and Dan Sanders-Joyce. Still, the standout may be Gudahl’s good-humored send-up of the unspoken law that 90 percent of all Shakespeare shows in Chicago must cast Gudahl. That’s metahumor we can get behind.
