Title: The Comedy of Errors
By: William Shakespeare
Location: Temporary Theatre (National Theatre), London, England
Date: Oct 28, 2015
In Attendance: Soeren Walls, Anubrat Prasai

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Soeren and I had different opinions about this play. I actually enjoyed the play. Given the intended audience were children, the play was quite good. The acting was bad but funny. They also engaged with the audience and children were having a lot of fun watching the play.There was a lot of physical humor involved. There was a point where they even had fart jokes – in a shakespeare play!

It was really interesting talking to Soeren after the play. He was upset about the execution and acting. I have to acknowledge that I have seen much better plays at CC than this one but I thought the play fulfilled its purpose – entertaining children. The tickets were also much cheaper for this play so it was smart pricing on the part of the production. I felt like they charged the most someone would be willing to pay for such a play.

~ Anubrat

 

This performance was invaluable for both of us, as one experienced and one novice theatre lover, because in every way imaginable, it was a perfectly executed example of how NOT to put on a Shakespeare play. To be fair, the intended audience for this particular adaptation of Shakespeare’s famously farcical fiasco was undoubtedly children, who were clearly entertained throughout. In that regard, it was a success, much in the same way that the Titanic succeeded in crashing into an iceberg.

Even with the relatively little acting experience I have with Shakespeare, having played a minor role in a performance of Macbeth, I know enough to be able to identify some of the classic and far too common mistakes actors and directors make with his plays.

One of these flaws is the fear that audiences will not be smart enough to comprehend the story without gross exaggerations and overly demonstrative acting, which is the enemy of realism. Now, when it comes to child audiences, it’s absolutely permissible to use exaggerated physical gestures or simplified language to help convey potentially complicated ideas in obvious ways. What is not permissible, in my opinion, is using the child audience to justify a lazy, half-hearted production, which is exactly what we saw. One of the most commonly accepted myths in all of literature and art is that children are too simple-minded to comprehend complexity and appreciate depth. On the contrary, children are perfectly capable of this, if only they are given the chance and medium through which to do so.

Another flaw was not trusting the text. Paraphrasing what I’ve learned from Colorado College’s Professor Andrew Manley, the playwright has given you everything you need, it’s your job to trust it. This performance was littered with actors glossing over their lines with cheesy, telenovela style delivery, instead of simply saying them and trusting that their meaning will get across. Again, I concede this is Shakespeare we’re talking about. Not just children, adults too, often get bored or confused with his language. There are many effective ways to get around this so that even children can enjoy him, but cheesy line delivery is not one of them.

All that being said, the children in the audience seemed to laugh and have a relatively enjoyable time. The show made clever use of blow-up animals as props and fun sing-along dance numbers. I’ve no qualms with that, but in my humble opinion, making adults miserable should not be a requisite of children’s theatre.

~ Soeren