STAGE WEST: "The Comedy of Errors" at the Old Globe

Lisa VillaMil, Will Blum and Brandon Micheal Hall in "The Comedy of Errors."              Photo by Jim Cox

            “The Comedy of Errors” is Shakespeare’s shortest comedy and a trifle, so why not have some unbridled havoc and giddy pop-culture nostalgia with it? Why not, oh let’s say, set it in the 1990s, the bygone decade of “Friends” and “Black Hole Sun” and Beavis & Butthead?
            They’re all nodded to in director James Vasquez’s whimsical take on “The Comedy of Errors,” the second of the Old Globe’s outdoor Shakespeare productions this summer in Balboa Park. A spinning top of mistaken-identity double takes, musical sound bites and athletic physical comedy, it makes the preceding “All’s Well That Ends Well” in the open-air Festival Theatre look staid by comparison.
            I tend to be a Shakespeare purist, but with the tragic plays. The comedies, I’m mostly down with choices to change the time period or the costumes and even with tossing in a few contemporary, anachronistic lines – as long as the foundation of The Bard’s work and words is maintained. Vasquez’s “The Comedy of Errors” may immerse itself in ‘90s garb (costumes by Amanda Vander Byl) and song samples that wouldn’t be out of place on 91X’s “Resurrection Sundays” show, but over the course of its fast-moving 90 minutes (just a coincidence), the antics of the play as written remain at the forefront.
            Nothing much to it: “The Comedy of Errors” concerns itself with the hapless confusion caused by the presence in Ephesus of two sets of identical twins. There’s separated-at-birth Antipholus of Ephesus (Joshua Echebiri) and Antipholus of Syracuse (Brandon Micheal Hall) and their respective manservants Dromio and Dromio (Daniel Petzold and Will Blum). The trouble they get into in town variously has to do with the law, with a goldsmith, with an abbess, but primarily with the indignant wife of A-of-E, Adriana (Sarah Stiles, this production’s comedic force-of-nature).
            Though intended to bolster the 1990s setting, not all the recorded musical fills seem necessary; some are distracting, or frustrating because we long to hear more of a favorite tune from that decade – like me after just a few bars of The Offspring’s “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy).” But this isn’t a jukebox musical or even close to one. It might be more apt to say that this “Comedy of Errors” suggests the ‘90s rather than trying to sound like them. Rather how Vasquez’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” staged here in 2023 suggested the 1950s.
            Rivaling the superb Stiles for laughs are the crowd-pleasing Dromios – Petzold and Blum. Not unlike the clown characters that are so much a part of Shakespearean comedy, they get to function without any pretense of dignity or solemnity. Anything goes with these two – Petzold, seen earlier this year at the Globe in its incendiary “Appropriate,” and Broadway veteran Blum (last appearing locally in CCAE Theatricals’ “Sunday in the Park with George”). I enjoyed watching these two even when they didn’t have lines to speak.
            Vasquez has somewhat of a three-ring circus to direct here and that’s accomplished without any sense that these actors are being directed. Everyone’s just uninhibitedly in play mode.
            I can’t recall seeing a 90-minute Shakespeare production outside at the Globe with no intermission – a treat in itself. That’s all the time one needs in Ephesus with the goings-on of “The Comedy of Errors.” On the warm summer night that it was, too, I didn’t even need a blanket.
            “The Comedy of Errors” runs through Aug. 24 in the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre.