Free The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

1962, Diana Rigg, as Adriana, realizing that it may not have been her husband that she had lovingly entertained earlier, delivered the question, “Which of you two did dine with me today?” with impeccable comic intonation, and Irving Wardle wrote of Judi Dench in 1976,
    We are unlikely ever to see a funnier Adriana … a peremptory odalisque downing her terrified servants with flying trays and point-blank bursts from the soda siphon and relapsing into voluptuous submission with her supposed spouse. 65
    In 1990, the audience’s awareness that one actor was playing both Dromios was neatly exploited when Doctor Pinch sawed Dromio in two. In 2005, Christopher Colquhoun, as Antipholus ofEphesus, locked out of his house by his wife, picked up his Dromio (Forbes Masson) and used him as a shock-headed, ginger battering ram to force the door. In 2000, Lynne Parker’s production took two of the great comic set pieces to new heights. David Tennant and Ian Hughes had established a particularly well-imagined relationship between master and servant, with Hughes playing not a clown, as many Dromios have done, but a slightly fussy, mustached “gentleman’s gentleman.” When they came to the geographical description of fat Nell in Act 3 Scene 2, they performed it as a piece of vaudeville, a hilarious double act played directly to the audience featuring, among other things, a retractable tape measure and often reducing the actors themselves to helpless laughter. The cinematic influence on the production was anarchically exploited in a Keystone Kops chase round the theater, which has become legendary. Not only did it feature a camel and a nun, but increasing numbers of the cast of
Henry IV Part II
(playing at the Swan Theatre next door and conveniently breaking for the interval as the chase took off), filling the streets of Ephesus with English lords, knights in armor, Desmond Barrit as Sir John Falstaff, and even, on the last night, Will Houston as Prince Hal.

    6. Lynne Parker’s 2000 production took the comic set pieces to new heights. David Tennant and Ian Hughes had established a particularly well-imagined relationship between master and servant, with Hughes playing not a clown but a slightly fussy, mustached gentleman’s gentleman.
THE DIRECTOR’S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH PAUL HUNTER, NANCY MECKLER, AND TIM SUPPLE
    Paul Hunter studied drama at Middlesex College, where he and Hayley Carmichael decided to set up their own theater company, an ambition finally realized in 1993 with Told by an Idiot when they took their first production,
On the Verge of Exploding
, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They have since built up the company’s reputation and stature by “celebrating and revelling in a style of theatre that is bigger than life.” Paul is a winner of the Jerwood Young Vic Award for Directing and his many directing credits include
Beauty and the Beast
(Warwick Arts Centre, Lyric Hammersmith),
Casanova
(Lyric Hammersmith),
A Little Fantasy
(Soho Theatre),
Shoot Me in the Heart
(the Gate), and
I Weep at My Piano
(BAC). He was associate director of Bolton Octagon between 2005 and 2008. Productions there included
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
(winner of Best Production, Manchester Evening News Awards). Recent directing credits include
Signour Carras Rifles
(Young Vic),
The Opium Eaters
(Brouhaha),
The Underpants
(Hope Street, Liverpool),
Light Is Light
(Brouhaha), and the Young People’s Shakespeare
The Comedy of Errors
(2009) for the RSC, discussed here.
    Nancy Meckler was brought up on Long Island, New York, and studied at Antioch College before completing a master’s degree at New York University and going on to train as an actress at LAMDA. Resident in the UK since 1968, her move into directing proved artistically rewarding and successful with a much-admired production of
Antigone
at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that went on to open the Berlin Festival. She has worked as associate director of the Hampstead Theatre and the