EAST CRAFTSBURY — A high-energy traveling troupe of very talented actors and actresses from Hanover, N.H., The Dartmouth Rude Mechanicals, visited the area recently and gave two delightfully entertaining performances of William Shakespeare’s “A Comedy of Errors,” first on Sunday, March 16, at the East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church and then on March 17 at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro. Their name was taken from the hilarious group of tradesman who put on a “play within the play” in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“A Comedy of Errors” is one of the Bard’s earliest works, probably written around 1591-2, although not formally documented until 1594 when it was staged at Grey’s Inn in London. The basic plot of this play was derived from the ancient Roman author, Plautus, but Shakespeare dropped some characters and added others. Thus the original confusions in the source between two identical twin brothers separated in their infancy is given added comic complexity by having their servants also be twins who suffered the same fate.
One could imagine, however unlikely, a production of “A Comedy of Errors” in which two sets of real identical twins were cast in the leading roles of masters and servants, but probably that would actually be too confusing for the audience to follow and undermine the convoluted comic moments. So we have to indulge in a little of that “willing suspension of disbelief” that is fundamental to all theater, in this case that the twins don’t look alike.
This production was prudently reduced in length and time for the touring group, to maintain momentum and tailor it for what would primarily be high school audiences. There was a lot of slapstick and physicality in the blocking, but that went with the well-paced humor of hopeless confusion. All the actors and actresses (11) were impressive in their dramatic skills and unhesitating delivery of their lines, simultaneously using their whole bodies to reinforce the meaning and emotions of the script. They were having fun with fine ensemble effect, and their enthusiasm was shared by the audience. While this play is primarily meant to entertain us with its humorous situations, it has some depth in the conversation about men between the wife of one of the twins and her sister in the first scene of the Second Act.
The action all takes place in Ephesus, and the background is set by Aegeon from Syracuse (Alex Campbell), the father of the two now-grown twin sons, telling how his family got shipwrecked and separated, he losing his wife and one of his sons. A second set of twin infants they had adopted from a poor family were also split, each later becoming servants to the first set of twins. Aegeon has been trying to find the lost ones, unsuccessfully, for the past five years.
Next, one of the twins, Antipholus of Syracuse (Jack Glass), enters with his servant Dromio (Mateo Suarez), who has come looking for his twin brother, who unbeknownst to him lives in Ephesus. Very quickly the initial confusion occurs when that brother’s servant, another Dromio and identical twin (Ford Springer), comes in and thinks Antipholus of Syracuse is his master. And so it goes, getting more and more absurd, until everyone thinks everyone else is mad or possessed. Antipholus of Ephesus (Ari Rabinowitz) has to deal with missed communications resulting in the jealousy of his wife Adriana (Lauren Mills) and her sister Luciana (Lucia Harsray) as well as the anger of the goldsmith Angelo (Lilla Bazek) over a gold necklace. Other roles were a merchant (Edith Stevenson), Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, and a policeman (Luke Gerdeman) and Aemilia, Dr. Pinch and Balthazar (all by Aleska Sorirov). The last two actors were also, respectively, the director of the play and the coordinator of the workshops that could follow the performances.
At the workshop in East Craftsbury, two pairs of audience members were given short selections from Shakespeare to act out, with very helpful coaching from the actors and actresses, which made one appreciate both the enormous amount of work that goes into preparing for a production (here, 10 to 12 weeks) as well as the richness and subtleties of Shakespeare’s texts. In the Greensboro presentation, the comedy was followed by a question-and-answer session, which was interesting for the varied majors of the students at Dartmouth and how many of them got an early start in theater when children, which shows the importance of theater programs in the schools.
The Dartmouth Rude Mechanicals are continuing on to a number of other schools in Vermont and in the Upper Valley during this week of their spring break. For more information, go online to Instagram:@dartrudemechs or Youtube: the Dartmouth Rude Mechanicals.
David K. Rodgers
David K. Rodgers is a writer, mason and card carrying dilettante, who dabbles and babbles in art. He has lived in East Craftsbury for the past 40 years.
