Comedy of Errors

Over the past few months I've been engaged in yet another completionist project in the literary realm - an attempt to read all 38 of Shakespeare's plays.  After finishing the Henry VI / Richard III tetralogy, I was quite relieved to see that the next play on my list was The Comedy of Errors.  Although Richard III can be considered a rather dark comedy, I was definitely in the mood for something lighter.  Errors, as anyone can guess from the name, is an extremely silly farce with a simple plot.  A set of twins, with matching twin slaves, is separated at birth.  When full-grown, they end up in the same town, and much confusion and general silliness ensues.

Of the third Shakespeare comedies I've read so far, this is definitely the one that keeps most of its humor today - it's a little more focused than Two Gentlemen of Verona, and more politically correct than Taming of the Shrew.  Interestingly, much of the wordplay is still funny today - it has fewer expired puns.

After reading each play, I'm rewarding myself by watching an adaptation of each.  For this I am eternally grateful to BBC's attempt to produce every one of Shakespeare's plays, sometime in the 80's.  It's actually quite surprising how many of his plays have only this one film adaptation.  As to be expected, the production values are quite low, but the acting is usually decent enough, the dialogue is at a reasonable pace (I'm looking at you, Olivier!), and they usually try to use the whole script, no matter how awkward that can be in some cases.

Their production of Errors - the only one I could find - is really good, sort of a hidden gem in my opinion.  They add enough physicality to make it fun, without distracting too much from the script.  Bizarrely, Roger Daltrey of the Who plays the twin slaves, both named Dromio, and does a surprisingly good job.  The real joy to watch is the great Charles Gray, best known for playing the Criminologist (with NO NECK) in Rocky Horror.  I tell you, that guy can class up even a Shakespeare play.