STAGE REVIEWS : SERIOUS-MINDED AND LIGHT HEARTED CHOICES : PLAYED JUST FOR LAUGHS, ‘COMEDY’ IS JUST AN ERROR

The first and the shortest of Shakespeare’s comedies, “The Comedy of Errors,” is the only play in the Bard’s canon that is sometimes played entirely for laughs.

That, however, does a disservice to the play.

Certainly the fantastic coincidences of the plot lend themselves to a farcical interpretation. Expanding on Plautus’ “Menaechmi,” Shakespeare tells the story of two sets of identical twins, masters and servants, separated from each other and their parents at birth, who grow up to find themselves after 33 years in the same city, on the same day, wearing the same clothes and running into the same people, all of which causes inevitable confusions and complications.

But the play, being Shakespeare’s, is more than Plautus’ simple laugh-fest. For Shakespeare, the question of identity is more that skin--or farce--deep. In his hands, the yearning of the parents for the sons and the brothers for each other suggest in part a search for the psychological completion of personality.

It is a level of meaning utterly missing from the slapstick “Comedy of Errors” playing at the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre through Sept. 20.

Consequently, while the production shimmers with funny innovations, there’s a hollowness at the center where there ought to be a heart.

One of the most intriguing of the changes is that of the venue. Shakespeare’s twin Antipholuses, merchants of Syracuse and Ephesus, here become Antifolo of San Diego and Antifolo of Monterey.

The atmosphere created by Robert Blackman’s colorful costumes and Douglas W. Schmidt’s playful 19th-Century Spanish mission set suggests a movie cantina where stock types like swashbuckling caballeros, seductive Spanish ladies, a Chinese merchant with long, curling green fingernails and a drawling goldsmith-cowboy with giant chaps can comfortably roam.

Director David McClendon keeps things jumping. For comic effect, he counterpoints the action with Conrad Susa’s romantic flamenco music and Denise Gabriel’s lusty choreography. And then there is the fountain in the center of the stage for characters to fall into when things get slow.

It is characterization, though, that is the main problem here. There is something amiss in the very first scene when Egeon, here called Egeo (Mitchell Edmonds), the merchant of San Diego, is introduced.

Egeo’s search for his lost sons is the heart of the play; if his story is long and absurd, his pain nevertheless should be serious if we are to care about the threat of death that hangs over him if he doesn’t pay a 1,000-mark penalty within 24 hours.

Instead, the part, to the detriment of the story, is played for laughs.

Even more seriously at odds with the text is the lightness of Mark Moses’ delivery of Antifolo of San Diego.

One of the most moving speeches in the play should be the one in which Antifolo, in describing the pain that caused him to roam for seven years in search of his brother (John Bolger), compares himself to “a drop of water,/That in the ocean seeks another drop.” Moses gets the lines out, shrugs, smiles and goes in the city to have a good time.

Indeed, the good time, which he does have, is another puzzlement. If things are so much fun, why, at a later point, does he want to flee the place in panic as if it were bewitched?

The answer, simply, is that this “good time” conflicts with the text. Antifolo wants to leave because he isn’t enjoying himself. Antifolo, unlike his brother, is a serious and sorrowful character, and this contrast between the brothers is key to the play. “Antipholus,” in Greek, means “opposed in balance.” Like two halves of a whole, each needs some of the other in him to be a fully realized and content personality.

In contrast, the Dromios, twin servants of the two Antifolos, are meant to be purely comic and are successfully so.

It is a credit to Rene Moreno as the San Diegan Dromio and Joseph Palmas as the Monterey one that their performances are so in tune that as individually good as their antic wide-eyed merriments are, it is hard to tell them apart.

Bolger is fine as the earthy Monterey Antifolo, but a far more on-target performance is given by Melody Ryane as Adriana, his jealous wife.

Ryane alone, for some reason, plays her serious part straight. The effect is to poignantly communicate her frustration with her husband’s emotional distance (like Antifolo of San Diego, she compares herself to “a drop of water in the breaking gulf”), all the while heightening the humor by making her reaction to the situation more real.

Marissa Chibas does not fare as well as Adriana’s sister, Luciana, moving choppily, without any evident motivation, from smiles to frowns. As if in punishment for these theatrical sins, she is made to wear a dress with puffed sleeves as big as her head that stands out as Blackman’s one serious lapse as costume designer.

The rest of the cast offers good support. Without sacrificing feeling, Sandy Kelly Hoffman brings a deft lightness to Emilia, Egeo’s long-lost wife. Gary Armagnac is fine as the slow-witted goldsmith, and David Hall as the spacy Pinch.

Corey L. Fayman’s sound is effective. The lighting by Kent Dorsey cleverly charts the passage of time, using a screen that shows a smiling sun traveling through the hours of the day. Of course, the humor of the idea might have taken away some of the suspense if any had escaped obliteration in the first scene.

It is ironic that the evident determination to have fun with this play makes the net result far less entertaining than it could have been. Still, the production, with its bright splashes of color and schtick, does often achieve the effect of a sugary confectioner’s treat. It may very well please--as long as one is not anticipating nourishment.

“THE COMEDY OF ERRORS” By William Shakespeare. Director is David McClendon. Set by Douglas W. Schmidt. Costumes by Robert Blackman. Lighting by Kent Dorsey. Sound by Corey L. Fayman. Music by Conrad Susa. Choreography by Denise Gabriel. Stage manager is Douglas Pagliotti. With Julian Gamble, Mitchell Edmonds, Sandy Kelly Hoffman, John Bolger, Mark Moses, Joseph Palmas, Rene Moreno, Melody Ryane, Marissa Chibas, Alicia Sedwitz, Hubert Baron Kelly, Gary Armagnac, Davis Hall, Andres Monreal, Eric Grischkat, David R. Conner, David Wright, Cynthia Blaise, Victoria Ortisematosan Edremoda, Diane Robinson, Scott Allegrucci, John Padilla, Randy Reinholz, Ray Chambers and Marc Raia. At 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, through July 26 and then in repertory through Sept. 20. At the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, Balboa Park.