Comedy of Errors

The Drayton Hall Theater was much nicer than I thought it was going to be. The stage was a proscenium style and along either side of the theater there were steps that lead down to each row. It reminded me of a smaller version of my home theater the Peace Center in Greenville. The sound system was really great! The music that they played came out clear and the characters were easy to hear. The opening set looked like it was in the streets of an old town. In the middle of the stage sat what looked like a puppet show stage. Here is where the actors showed what happened before the begining of the play. The set changed only slightly throughout. It had a cage looking thing on stage left where this homeless "muse" type guy sat, some 2 buildings that characters could act through the windows or on a balcony and doors that accessed the stage. Later on a disco ball was lowered which I thought was fun!

The play was written by William Shakespeare and his original language is used. But looking at the costumes I'd say it looked like it was supposed to be set in the seventies instead of the Renaissance period that it was written in. Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616. I found it itneresting that on the USC Theater website they say that "It is widely believed that Shakespeare based the story on the work Menaechmi by the Roman playwright Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC)."

In the Comedy of Errors, two sets of twins, one set named Dromio and the other named Antipholus are separated after their boat cracked in half at a very young age. One set ends up in Syracuse and the other in Ephesus. Dromio and Antipholus of Syracuse travel to Ephesus and are confused when things start happening that they didn't do. Such as, Antipholus's wife, Adriana, locking him out of the house when she believed he was inside because it was his identical twin from Syracuse. And one recieving a chain (clap) that he has not paid for. All sorts of other mixups and mishalfs happen untill two of the twins are jailed for being insane and they magically escape (because the other set wasn't ever locked up). The head Nun ends up helping the town of Ephesus figure out that the two are twin brothers, and in a strange twist reveals that she is their mother, Emilia, and is reunited with their father Egeon.